


Buried Beneath the Ashes of Old Dreams

by Lovely_Silhouette



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, And then learning to actually talk to each other, Bottom Dante (Devil May Cry), Communication Failure, Dante is a fucking wreck, Depression, Dom/sub Undertones, Father-Son Relationship, First Time, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Intercrural Sex, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Nero is a Good Son, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Post-Devil May Cry 5, Reunion Sex, Sibling Incest, Twincest, Vergil is a hot mess, very brief vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2020-03-17 12:24:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18965194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovely_Silhouette/pseuds/Lovely_Silhouette
Summary: Open and honest communication has never been Vergil's strongest point - not as a child, struggling to make his way in a world he thought had abandoned him, and certainly not now. As it so happens, Dante isn't very good at it either.They're brothers - bound by shared blood and an inherited legacy stretching back over 2,000 years - but sometimes having a shared bond isn't enough. Even when the bad blood has been drained away, how far can this bond stretch before something has to give?(They better be glad Nero loves them as much as he does, or else he'd have launched himself head-first into a brick wall by now. Lady and Trish, too.)





	1. Buried Beneath...

**Author's Note:**

> Hey and welcome to my first attempts at writing smut in 7-8 years lol. That won't be for a few chapters, but we'll see how it all goes. In the meantime, have all this Sparda Brother's angst! >:D

Their inevitable reappearance back in the human world was a much simpler affair than Vergil anticipated. Upon severing the last of the Qliphoth roots, the only thing stopping them from returning immediately was the call of his blood to clash against his brother, to press demonic steel against steel and let the familiar, much-missed language of violence and camaraderie flow between them. Annoying as the distractions of lesser demons was, there was nothing prevent the two of them from going as long as they pleased. The energy suffusing the Underworld nourished their demonic blood enough that they hadn't had to worry about growing tired for too long, and Vergil had spent enough of his life there to learn how to safely procure food and drink for both of them. That Dante also knew how, had spent his own time in the Underworld was a surprise, but a welcome one.

Reluctant as he is to admit it even to himself, Vergil finds that he dearly missed being able to look over his shoulder and see Dante there behind him. Missed being able to hear the rustle of Dante's clothing as they sit near each other and smell gun oil and those fanciful roses of his just before sleep takes him. They never really had time after the attack that separated them, nor after learning that his brother was still among the living after all. It is more than Vergil ever anticipated that he would have again after throwing himself into the Underworld all those years ago. He is unsure if his growing re-familiarization of these things leaves him comforted or unsettled.

It was hard to keep track of how long had passed since they first fell. The Underworld does not have a true night, only periods when the light shining from above was dimmed by the thicker clouds of noxious moisture and lightning drifting overhead. The only reason they left when they did was because Dante complained about missing his pizza nights and strawberry sundaes. It was almost a shock to learn that only a few months had passed.

Dante's arrival is been well-received by most everyone they have to contact upon their return, his brother's spirits instantly brightening after even the euphoria from their reunion settled. Vergil's presence is met with glares, vague hostility and an uncertainty that comes from being met with an enemy and told they were harmless. At least Nero's particular greeting involved being punched by his flesh hand rather than a spectral one. Afterwards, watching his son pounce on Dante and drag him to the floor for a proper thumping had been exceedingly amusing. Even more so was watching his enormous, well-built gladiator of a brother hide behind Nero's diminutive, laughing beloved in a futile attempt to escape Nero's righteous indignation.

Had she gotten the chance to meet him, their mother would have adored Nero. The temper Vergil sees in him is a flame clearly kindled from hers, made wild by youth and a potent devil's heritage, and fueled by powerful emotion.

Yes, Eva would have adored her grandson.

That night sees them back within the tacky, homely walls of Devil May Cry, the light flickering on when Dante toggles the switch. Through V's limited scope, the shop had seemed cluttered, barren of anything remotely charming or enjoyable. Everything smacked of Dante's childhood laziness and irreverence towards his things - everything from the scattered papers and surprising number of books littering the ground to the unwashed windows and stink of pizza and potent booze thoroughly embedded into every unfortunate surface. Repulsed as V had been, there had been a certain comforting nostalgia in this familiarity.

Restored to his true self, Vergil sees the shop through different eyes. The distant corners of the room bare plants only-slightly wilted by neglect. The books spread across the shop bear familiar titles and are attached to familiar names. Beneath the odor that makes his nose want to curl, his brother's scent lingers without mixing properly - a demon's subtle claim upon his territory, utterly undetectable to a human's senses.

Eva's picture rests near the middle of the front desk. Most of the wine bottles are stamped with the name of a brand Vergil has vague, time-worn memories of Sparda drinking as he and his wife read by the fire on cold winter nights. Vergil picks up one of the books on the floor beside the couch, dusts off the cover, and instantly recognizes it from their mother's library. Not the exact copy - Vergil distinctly remembers Dante accidentally dripping the contents of his lunch on the last page while Vergil was trying to read it - but the same book nonetheless.

Dante stretches his arms over his head with a tight groan, his spine giving an audible pop. The gesture seems luxurious, careless, and has Vergil scanning the shop for movement on instinct.

"Ugh...," Dante groans, bodily collapsing into his chair with eyes closed. His face, lined deeply in a pattern that speaks to long-periods of unreleased stress, is drawn by weariness and enervation. There are bags under his eyes that weren't there before their fall together. If he looks in a mirror, Vergil is sure he'd look much the same way. Dante yawns heartily. "It's good to be home again. It's too late for a delivery, but then again I'm about ready to crash..."

Vergil makes a noise of understanding. A similar fatigue pulls at his mind and body. It is not the constant, agonizing anchor-weighted pull as his body begs for a second's rest, disregarding that doing so would result in Vergil's second death, but it is still noticeable. That there is even a comparison to be made leaves his mind disquieted. Instead of dwelling on it, Vergil redirects his attention upon a less distressing target. "What," Vergil says, a teasing smirk blooming across his face, "are a few hundred thousand demons truly enough to bring you so low, Legendary Demon Hunter?"

Vergil makes his way over to the desk, setting the Yamato down on top. Someone, possibly the demon Trish or Arkham's daughter, must have cleaned the place up a little, because he doesn't step on any loose papers or kick any bottles on his way. If Vergil is going to be staying here for any length of time, he's going to rope Dante into helping him clean it further.

 _If_ Dante will let him stay within his territory, that is. Vergil assumes he will, given his insistence in not letting Vergil out of his sight.

"Shut it, Verge," Dante grumbles pitifully, head falling back. The angle draws Vergil's gaze to his long throat like the promise of blood draws a hungry predator.

(There are many subtle intricacies of demonic behavior and cultures that can only be experienced when embroiled in their world for years at a time. One is that there are no acceptably accurate equivalents to the trust and vulnerability shown when one voluntarily exposes their throat as humans and animals do, even among demons capable of higher thought processes. There _are_ , however, concepts of conquest, of dominance and submission and the establishing of hierarchy. Claiming another for ones own; both their life, and their death, completely.

For the thousandth since they were teens, Vergil wonders what it would mean if Dante let him place his hands over his throat. If he could gently wrap his fingers around that pale column and hold it, feeling the strong pulse of his blood beneath his fingers. Would it be out of trust? Submission? Both? He wants to find out some day, if Dante will let him.)

After a second, Dante picks his head up and looks Vergil over with half-lidded eyes. The sweeping gaze is quick, clinical, and turns away quickly. "The shower is upstairs if you want it first. It's the second door to the left. I'll start laundry tomorrow."

"So generous," Vergil replies, flat. "I supposed you'll also want me to check and see if the water is still on."

Dante hides his answering smirk by busying himself with unlocking a small safe in one of his desk drawers, taking a key out of his pocket and inserting the deed he retrieved from a J.D. Morrison. The angle obscures the contents from Vergil's mild curiosity, but he puts it out of his mind in favor of the promise of future cleanliness.

As it turns out, the water is still on, and the water heater is still fully operational. The hot spray from the shower-head goes a long way to helping sooth the persistent ache in his muscles. There's only a few cheap-looking bars of soap when he looks for something to wash himself. Reluctant as he is to apply it to his hair and skin, the soap must have been specially designed for cleaning away demon filth for how quickly it cuts through the grime, leaving behind the familiar scent of roses. Vergil is reluctantly impressed. Dried blood is difficult to clean off without an intense amount of scrubbing, and all manner demonic fluids manage to be triply so. His first actual shower in 24 years, and Vergil comes out feeling like he's once again been christened anew. Though the recombination of V and Urizen's atomized essences might have rebirthed him as something pristine, nothing survives a trip to the Underworld unsullied by something. A bitter truth Vergil has been made to swallow over and over again.

After he's dried himself off, having no other choice and not wishing to walk around naked, Vergil rifles through his brother's clothing until he comes across a pair of sweatpants and the first plain, sleeveless muscle shirt that isn't sweat-stained or moth-eaten.

He makes his way back to the front of the shop, towel wrapped around his shoulders and hair still damp enough to fall down from the style he wants to put it in. Dante pauses obviously from where he's shamelessly parading in his underwear, even his signature jack discarded somewhere out of sight. Vergil takes a moment to admire his brother's shapely form, the years having transformed his boyish beauty into the statuesque magnificence of a man. He's larger than Vergil remembers - his body having gained strong, broad shoulders and limbs like solid oak trunks to go along with a thicker, sturdier core than the youth he had been possessed. He has a _beard_ , scruffy and rugged, silver hairs dusting the rest of his body, and that's not something Vergil ever thought would give him pause. Even covered in sweat, blood and bile, Dante remains the most enticing creature in the room.

Dante looks around the room as if to pinpoint something, and then looks over his shoulder at where Vergil is, seemingly confused. Vergil raises an eyebrow in response to the way Dante stares at him, like he hadn't expected Vergil to be there.

"The shower is all yours," Vergil says when the silence lasts a moment too long. It seems to startle Dante out of his thoughts, causing him to draw himself up straight.

"Oh good," Dante snarks back, mouth slotting itself into an easy grin. "I was wondering if you'd drowned in there or something. See you've already raided my closet - not cool, Vergil. You could have just asked."

Vergil snorts and holds up the bundle of soiled clothing in his hand. "And give you room to pick out the most ridiculous outfit you have? I don't think so. Where is your washing machine?"

"It's through there," his brother replies, flicking his head back towards a door obscured by the shadows cast by the lit-up jukebox. "Just dump 'em with the rest. Kitchen is around the corner if you're hungry. Not sure what food is still back there, but the canned stuff should still be good."

"Delicious. So you do eat more than pizza after all. With the amount of recycling left over, I was starting to wonder."

Dante frowns at him, brandishing a truly fearsome finger in Vergil's direction. "Hey. Just because pizza is the best party food in existence doesn't mean I don't eat anything else."

The frown doesn't last more than a few seconds before it breaks. They trade grins, and Vergil feels warmth flutter to life in his gut like butterfly wings even as his fingers itch for Yamato's hilt. The little spats, ribbings and incitements that they indulge in have become a welcome part of his routine since their reunion, more grounding than anything he has ever known. For a moment, he can believe they are as if they were children again, throwing banter at each other like handfuls of grass as they seek each other's attention like birds seek freedom in the sky.

The moment passes quickly, however. Dante coughs into his fist and schools his smile into something a bit more close-lipped, eyes briefly drifting away. The change is a little jarring, considering the past few months of closeness. "I got to thinking while you were in the shower. My guest room isn't really up for anyone staying over right now, so you might as well take my bed tonight, yeah? I've still got to take care of things down here. Might end up crashing on the couch after my shower."

That is reasonable, Vergil muses, only a little dejected. As amusing as it would be to start another spar and _accidentally_ slice a little below the belt, thereby liberating his brother from his atrociously bleach-stained underwear, both of them are tired. Perhaps on the edge of exhaustion, really. The air of the human world doesn't have the same stamina-restoring properties for their blood to feast upon.

Ingrained instinct snarls in the back of Vergil's mind, telling him that it isn't safe to be apart for so long, that Dante cannot be left alone when he is this weakened. He reigns it in with a self-possessed skill brought on by necessity and practice. There is nothing in the human world capable of touching them, and demons are so much more rare on this side of the veil.

"I believe I may take you up on that offer. Thank you," Vergil says, suddenly a bit unsure of himself in his brother's home. Not even a day away from the Underworld and already he misses the simplicity of it all.

"Anytime, Vergil," Dante replies, lips twitching into something less repressed for an instant before he makes his way upstairs. Vergil tosses his clothing onto the pile almost up to his knees, eats most of a can of preserved fruit cocktail, grabs the Yamato and makes his way back up to his brother's room. Unexplained nervous energy hums through his muscles. Knowing from experience that such a thing will steal otherwise precious rest, Vergil picks up all the bottles scattered around the bedroom and tosses them in a trash bag for recycling in lieu of preparing for bed. When that fails to do more than take the edge off, Vergil meditates on the dirty floor with the Yamato in his lap until the buzzing under his skin is little more than a distant memory.

At last, around 1 in the morning, Vergil is able to slot himself under the cover of his brother's enormous bed, dislodging part of the veritable nest of pillows in the process. It is softer than he expected, numerous pillows aside, and the heart of the nest smells of Dante's musk strongly.

That night, Vergil dreams of Dante sleeping in his arms for the first time since they were children.

* * *

The next day, the demon Trish walks in through the front door, carrying papers in one hand and two large pizza boxes bearing the name Siciliano's Pizza in the other.

Her heels click against the wood flooring in a pointed, staccato rhythm and her eyes are focused. She would be Eva's double if it wasn't for the natural aura of static electricity that clings to her hair and the way she grins like her mouth is full of blunted blades. A predator choosing to sheath their claws for the moment. Vergil has to breathe through the sudden pang in his chest at the sight of her. He has memories of V doing much the same. "Well, look what the cat dragged in. I thought I saw the lights on last night."

Dante sniffs the air and throws his hands up in delight, nearly tilting back in his seat at his desk. From his position at the dusty bar, Vergil can't help the fascination that colors his observation of the warmth that illuminates his brother's eyes. "Trish! Oh, babe, do you know how to treat a friend after a long trip. Is that barbecue chicken pie for me?"

"With double the cheese," Trish supplies. Dante whoops, his excitement easing the darkness of the bags under his eyes. If Vergil didn't know any better, he'd say Dante hadn't slept at all last night.

"You are a _dream_ ," Dante sighs in appreciation. He then props his chin on his hand, affability fading slightly in the wake of expectation. "What do you want?"

Trish sniffs a sound of offense so convincing Vergil isn't quite sure if she's joking or not. She places the boxes on the desk and takes a seat on the corner, never taking her hand off the cardboard. "What? Can't an old friend just come and visit after you've been away for so long?"

An incredulous bark of laughter escapes Dante, his shoulders jolting beneath his spare jacket. The garment is much shorter than the one he dove into the Underworld in, the style more like a biker's jacket. It looks good on him. "Not when it comes to you. What? You need bills to be paid? Property damage? You pissed Lady off again and now you need a place to crash where she can't immediately shoot you?"

The demon bearing an approximation of their mother's face grins mysteriously, as if in on some joke. "Nothing so dramatic, but there _is_ the matter of the utility bills we've been paying while you were on your little road trip family reunion."

 Dante groans, loud and piteous, leaning back in his chair. "At least feed me if you're going to torture me like this, Trish."

Laughing with presumed victory, Trish takes her hand away from the pizza boxes, letting Dante grab for them with covetous fingers. He opens it and takes a moment to breathe in the smell, the resultant sigh as decadently satisfied as a gourmand savoring the cooking of the finest chefs. Vergil shakes his head. He'll never understand his brother's enjoyment of cheap, greasy pizza. He certainly never liked it whenever the cook who worked for their parents made it.

Vergil steps out into the front office space and finds himself under scrutiny, blue eyes guarded and unsurprised, set like gemstones in an impassive mask. There's no way she would not have sensed him when she came into the space, so Vergil does not let himself slow down. He paces to Dante's side and, not in the mood for more cold, preserved fruit or tasteless, salty soups, grabs a slice for himself. The taste of slick grease is heavy on his tongue, even when the copious amounts of cheese and well-grilled chicken hit his tongue. His face wants to tighten unpleasantly, but it's not the worst thing he's ever had to eat by far, so he makes himself to swallow and take another bite.

After the second bite, it even becomes tolerable.

Trish narrows her eyes and smiles.

"I see _you're_ back, Vergil," she says conversationally in-between bites of her pizza. Her weight shifts in her seat ever so slightly. "Or, do you still go by Nelo Angelo?"

Vergil freezes.

Ah, I see, he thinks. So this is how it's going to be. He forces himself to finish the bite in his mouth, ignoring the sound of pulsing blood in his ears.

"Trish," Dante snaps, hints of warning and pain in the barbwire sharpness of his tone. The sound soothes something raw and painful and lonely in his chest, allowing him to take a steadying breath. He has to blink away the sensation of heavy black armor, as confining as spiked chains digging into his flesh. Resolutely, he keeps his other hand away from the ornate hilt strapped to his waist.

"Vergil is fine, thank you," he replies, forcing himself to meet her gaze with a stoutness he does not fully feel in the moment. "That little pet name never suited me very well."

Trish smiles sweetly, even as Dante looks between them warily, slice forgotten in his hand. It almost manages to conceal the venom in her eyes. "I've gotta say, you certainly cleaned up. That armor added way too much bulk, and that sword was better suited to an executioner than a noble son of Sparda. This look suits you better."

The words sink deeper than Vergil expected them to, for all that the memories do not present themselves. Beside him, Dante's expression of wariness starts to tip into hesitant readiness. His lack of obvious reaction to the barb is interesting. Did Trish not tell him?

V's familiars were formed from the experiences Vergil rejected, discarded like old rags too damaged to be comfortably worn. Without them there to lend context to the feelings, there is only the knowledge that these things once happened - like reading about yesterday's happenings in today's newspaper, and the rare, fleeting sensations that were carved indelibly into his flesh. Vergil knows of the black armor that served as Nelo Angelo's identity, made thick and heavy and bulky to both obscure Vergil's half-human nature and refine his demonic heritage into something worthy of inspiring the awe and fear granted to Mundus' servants. He knows of the sword that was bestowed upon Nelo Angelo, created for the sole purpose of laying waste to the enemies of Hell's throne. He knows that Mundus had taken him and twisted his rival's eldest son into a common assassin, a false knight with no other code than to kill as he is bid. The reminder is callus, aimed to wound no doubt as the mimic intended, but they do not inspire the soul-rending humiliation and fear the recollections used to. They can't.

_(Dante told him of the familiars' sacrifice, of their camaraderie and love for Vergil, during their little sojourn into the Underworld, after Vergil asked about what happened to them in a moment of weakness. V's memories told him that, without a host there to draw power from, they should have perished within a matter of hours. He couldn't help finding it appropriate, that they asked his little brother to kill them and set Vergil free.)_

Instead of drawing blood, her words serve only to irritate him. He would have taken her head for that, if she weren't one of Dante's friends.

One of V's memories tentatively steps forward, disgust and horror at the monstrous knight made in the shape of an Angelo. Reluctantly, Vergil steers the course of his reply along a different road. "As does freedom, you."

Trish's brow raises in surprise, eyes shuttering as she takes him in again.

She blinks, slowly, considering. A gesture distinctly not human. "It does, doesn't it? Now Dante, about that money you owe Lady and I..."

"I haven't even finished one slice yet!"

Silent, Vergil listens as Dante tries in vain to negotiate down the price of his debts. Trish spares him no more attention, not even glancing in his direction. He should have expected such a reaction, he supposes grudgingly. He never had much cause to interact with many of Mundus' other servants - at first too busy trying to escape and rid himself the corruption clogging his veins, and then only reluctantly serving a master he considered beneath him even as he feared the false god's wrath. Trish would have only seen him from a distance. The first time they spoke in person, he was but a crumbling vessel of dried blood and ashes, who confessed to crimes he should have had no knowledge of to a facsimile of a mother he has long since started to forget the face of.

24 years, Dante told him down in the demon's realm - 24 years lost to a foolish mistake. It hadn't seemed real then, even with Dante's existence beside him. An ever-present reminder that time has passed in ways that Vergil no longer has a sense of. And only now does it occur to him the value of what he's lost. The realization... staggering, and embittering.

The life-span of true hybrids like himself and Dante varies greatly when there is documentation at all, and never before has there been a record of a demon of their father's caliber having offspring with a human. That Eva was able to survive to birth them despite the constant pressures their demonic blood would have put on her is a testament to both her stubborn will, and Sparda's dedication as a mate. Their lives are biological miracles when all signs indicate that they never should have even been _conceived_ , their father too powerful and their mother too human, and Vergil _wasted_ 24 years of it. 9 years as little more than a slave, and another 10 as little more than a wraith caught between the agony of the living and the succor of true death.

Years spent wandering the abyss, just to see and cross blades with his precious little brother one last time. Even he can humble himself and realize how fortunate he is to have this second chance.

 _Never again_ , Vergil swears to himself. His hands clench, fingers biting into his palm like the edges of an oath. He will not waste any more time.

Another slice of pizza is waves in front of his face, Dante holding it with an expectant look. The first box is already empty and the second is more than half-way done. Vergil snatches the offered slice with ill-tempered grace. Dante grins knowingly, causing Vergil to bite into his slice more viciously than he intends.

"Well, seeing as how you've got another mouth to feed, Dante, I think we can work something out," Trish says with a close-lipped smile too practiced to be real. The same cannot be said for the glimmer of gleeful amusement in her eyes. "Lady isn't in the mood to come for your hide in person, so you've _probably_ got a bit of wiggle room on the deadline."  
  
"Deadline!?" Dante squawks, an undignified sound. "When did anyone mention a deadline!?"

"I'm surprised you managed to blow through our parents inheritances so quickly, little brother," Vergil says, dry and a touch exasperated. "I can't imagine why _else_ you would need to worry about a deadline."

Dante's awkward pause does not tip him off. The hand that comes up to rub his neck, a telling gesture of discomfort that started after their father marched him by the back of the neck to face their mother's judgement for breaking a vase, however, does.

"Dante...," Vergil leads, impatient.

"Yeah, about that..." The hand on his neck moves to rub through his hair, exposing the stone cut of his jaw and the smooth ridge of his cheekbone, drawing Vergil's eye. "So... You remember The Assholes? From mom's side of the family? Prissy Becky and Ed who never shared his toys when we came to visit, and Lorenzo who had that stick up his ass about that old fencing trophy?"

Vergil furrows his brow. "... I thought Lorenzo was the one who was always obsessing over mother having married a "common researcher" with "unsightly hair"."

"Nah, that was ol' Bernice. She was mom's... aunt, I wanna say? Long dead, now."

Vergil hums dismissively, taking another bite and chewing before responding. Across the desk, Trish watches their exchange with a hungry interest. "And what do distant relatives have to do with your lack of finances?"

Dante glares back, only a little heated. "Well, as it turns out, when mom died and neither of us stepped forward to claim that we were alive to any human authorities, that meant that the Cino family inheritance, plus whatever our old man added to it, went up for grabs. By the time it was safe enough for me to go by my own name again, there weren't even scraps left. I tried contacting them to see if I couldn't get some things returned, or at least get some of the money back, but mostly I just got doors slammed in my face if they answered at all. The most I could get was the emergency fund mom set aside for us, and most of that went towards buying the shop. The rest had to go towards repairs, since _someone_ ," his gaze becomes pointed, "decided to raise Temen-ni-gru right on my doorstep."

Vergil smothers the flicker of guilt that wants to bloom inside his ribs. "It's not my fault that your choice of location sucked."

His brother rolls his eyes hard enough that it's a wonder they're still in his head, arms flinging themselves into the air and missing Vergil by inches. Dante reaches for another slice, only to find that not even an inch of crust remained in the box. Trish smiles another practiced uptick of the lips, and Dante groans loudly in defeat.

"Cino family?" The mimic asks, licking her fingers.

"The human side of our heritage," Vergil clarifies. "Our human last names as well. Hearing of what's transpired, I suddenly find myself thankful I relied on one of our father's caches growing up. Dealing with that school of piranha would have been... unpleasant."

"The kid might appreciate getting in on some of that name business. Might want to tell him sometime," Dante pipes up from where he is seemingly attempting to rub his eyes out of existence.

Nero could quite possibly be interested in that connection. The boy had been very insistent on keeping in contact and affirming their relation despite his hostile greeting. And, Vergil supposes, he _does_ owe his son more than just a book of poetry, no matter how beloved, and a promise to return disguised as a challenge. He hasn't seen any sign of Nero's mother, either. That might be worth investigating, once he establishes himself in the human world once again.

Nodding slowly to Dante in acknowledgement, Vergil starts planning. While it's true that he can search for and subsist on another of Sparda's caches, their father had hidden them well. The one he found as a teenager was the only one he ever managed to find rumors for, let alone track down. That aside, doing so would mean potentially falling prey to boredom and rust. He's never going to be suited for ordinary human work, so that leaves out the most readily available options for employment. On the other hand, having not one, not two, but _four_ highly-skilled demon hunters in a single city, especially when three of them have supernatural skills of their own, is just begging for a battle over hunting grounds and jobs. That leaves the less scrupulous jobs, which Vergil tosses away out of principal, and...

Hmmm... That could work.

Trish finishes her visit after extracting a promise to pay her demanded amount from Dante's addled form. Vergil leaves him to it, unsure of his place in the grand scheme of his brother's relationships with those he considers friends, and convinced that any attempt from him to alleviate the pressure would only cause it to double down. As she leaves, Trish gives Vergil one final look, unreadable as stone. The exchange is... puzzling, but at least he no longer senses hostility from her.

Vergil is just about to head into the kitchen in search something more filling than two slices of greasy pizza when Dante's voice calls out to him.

"About what Trish said," his brother says, leading, eyes partially hidden by his bangs. "About me having another mouth to feed. Don't worry about it, okay? I'm not going to force you to pay up when this is the first time you're gonna really _be_ in the human world since... since we were teenagers. You just concentrate on yourself, yeah?"

"I'm not about to become a freeloader now, brother," Vergil tells him in no uncertain terms. The very idea rankles. "For as long as I am allowed to stay, I shall contribute. I may need to borrow an unused side room, however."

Out of reflex, Vergil reaches for his half of the perfect amulet. His fingers clench on air, as they have for some time now. The amulet was missing upon his unstable, piecemeal reformation, and in his desperation to see Dante and defeat him, he had somehow ignored the loss. Given that Dante had the awakened Sparda with him, it's not hard to guess where it now resides. Since Dante left him with Trish, however, Vergil hasn't seen hide nor metal sheen of the ancient blade.

Vergil's brow furrows in consternation. Some deep, ugly part of himself snarls at the loss.

"Dante," he says, to which his brother gives a curious sound of acknowledgement. "What happened to our father's sword? To the amulets?"

Dante looks at him with open surprise. "Hm? Oh, I guess I never did tell you. That new form of mine? Since I didn't have a Qliphoth fruit to give _me_ a power boost, I used the Rebellion to sort of... fuse myself with it and the Sparda."

The words burrow themselves into his ears, and for a brief instant the world seems devoid of sound, of temperature, of movement. He does not feel the beat of his heart - only the beginnings of it sinking beneath his ribs. His stiff fingers ache and tingle like they're wrapped around something that bites into his skin.

Dante continues, not having noticed the way Vergil goes still with his hand fiddling with his fringe. "Hurt like a bitch, too. Definitely not something I-"

Enough. "Dante," Vergil says weakly, his lips forming the shape of the word even as his breath suddenly struggles to leave his lungs.

_"That day mother saved me and... left you behind."_

His brother looks to him, concern in his gaze a searing weight that burns his insides raw and makes the deepest, ugliest, loneliest parts of himself _howl_.

"It's gone," Vergil says, not even bothering to question it. There's no reason Dante would lie to him, not about this. A tide moves within Vergil, faint, worsening trembles in his chest that threaten to spread to the rest of his body if he would let it. The beginning pulls of a wave that threatens to drown him whole. "The amulet is gone."

Tentatively, as if considering a cornered animal, Dante gives a slow nod. "Yeah. I mean, the perfect amulet was absorbed into the Sparda years ago. In a way, it's been gone for a while now."

_"The thing you don't know is - she tried to save you too!"_

It's anger, Vergil realizes distantly, that shakes him. That threatens to extend beyond the iron clench of his will. Threads of cloying, choking anger that don't burn his insides and turn his vision crimson so much as sweep through his body like frigid winter gales and blizzard-laden winds. His neck feels too light for how heavy his chest is without the golden chain that once sat upon it. The childish urge to reach for his clavicle, where the familiar and divisively grounding weight of his half of their mother's last gift once rested, is unbearable.

_"She kept searching and searching..."_

"It's _gone_ ," he repeats, and this time it seems to stick. His vision distorts wetly. To his horror, tears threaten to fatten in his eyes.

"Vergil-"

_"... until it killed her."_

Vergil turns on his heel, determined to hide his shameful display. His appetite is gone. The tremor in his chest is now a physical thing, an earthquake that seeks to tear him to pieces. The approaching wave has grown into a tsumani, and even after being corrupted and torn asunder and born anew Vergil understands himself enough to know that if he doesn't extract himself from the situation soon, he's going to attack Dante with everything he has.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Vergil says to Dante with a gravel-laden tongue and a throat like sandpaper. "The amulets had both our names on them, didn't they? You always did have a nasty habit of taking what was mine."

He turns his back to Dante, already half out of his seat, and makes for the stairs. The way his little brother's gasp, anguished and wounded, rakes across his sense of hearing hurts and makes him want to claw his own ears off to get away from the sound. The only thing it does is deepen the wound, aggravate the cracks, and the there's no way to get rid of the surge of desperate aggression that takes him other than to wrap his hand around the Yamato's hilt and draw her.

* * *

 

Later, after holing himself up in Dante's room like a child and running through his katas until he's sweating and out of breath, nauseous guilt claws its way up Vergil's throat. An unsettlingly familiar emotion these days, as it turns out. Logically, it was not Dante's fault that the only achievable way to defeat Urizen was to absorb the Sparda and the amulets that released its unvarnished power. Nor would he have had much if any previous knowledge on the amount of emotional weight even Vergil hadn't been fully aware of having placed on his half of the amulet.

The reason for his unseemly anger earlier is clear as day to him. Eva's last gift to him, whether out of a mother's love for her son or trust in her husband's offspring, was the last piece of her Vergil had. So set on embracing his father's power and discarding his humanity he had been, but never once had he been able to forget what it felt to be cared for by her. Not until corruption and torment had scoured his mind through, and even then not enough that he had ever forgotten the amulet's importance.

And, through a cruel twist of fate and irony, it was now lost forever. Absorbed into the one last remaining thing that ever mattered to him. Even now, the knowledge is a sinking weight within him.

He approaches his brother the next morning with the intention of rectifying his mistake, of even explaining his unacceptable behavior, but his brother waves off his efforts with a smile that doesn't quite sit right on his face. "It's alright. I get it. I kinda miss mine, too," Dante says, like he's the one who should be reassuring _Vergil_.

The bags under his eyes have grown deeper.


	2. ... the Ashes of Old Dreams...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand here's were it all gets worse... >:)
> 
> Chapter Warning: Brief vomiting near the end, as well as a mental breakdown

A week passes since their return to the human world, and then a second. The next thing Vergil knows, he's spent an entire month in the human world as himself for the first time in 24 years.

His life has adopted a sort of routine in the intervening time between his and Dante's return to now; he wakes up in the room that used to be Dante's guest room, does his daily exercises and then raps loudly on his brother's door to wake him up for breakfast. After he successfully manages to force something besides cold leftover pizza down Dante's throat, he goes into one of the side rooms that he's commandeered and begins his new work in the appraisal, study, trade and sale of objects of occult interest. The work is engaging, if somewhat tedious; often Vergil is required to spend hours poring over old tomes or examining rare artifacts of power and rare ingredients used in everything from alchemy to rituals. Sometimes the odd old manuscript crosses his desk, some so old and fragile that an unwary touch could send the pages crumbling, and often bound in leather of questionable origins. Vergil would still be back at square one if he hadn't managed to get his hands on a portion of their mother's old research books.

Getting into contact with a few of the newer generations of their human extended family had been tiresome, but it had also resulted in finding a sympathetic soul among the jackals. Vergil hadn't bothered remembering her name, only that she had been understanding enough when he spoke about wanting to retrieve anything that had belonged to Eva. She had convinced a few of the others to turn up an entire trunk's-worth of books and references, hand-written essays and pamphlets and loose-leaf binders - all coming from their mother's private library, dusty and unused under the care of those too ignorant to see the true value of a witch and demonologist's life's work. It's not complete by far. Some works looked to have been a part of a set that was partially consumed by the fire, and other parts are clearly first drafts to academic essays whose completed works no longer exist. Even so, that this much had survived the fire 35 years ago is incredible. The sight of them forms a lump in Vergil's throat even now.

While they are no replacements for his amulet, he cannot deny that being able to hold them, feeling with his own skin another surviving reminder that Eva had once existed, is soothing. That he can find a way to continue her work is, perhaps, even more so.

He's still not entirely sure how he feels about the truth of her death. He's spent most of his life believing that, even if she hadn't truly left him to die as he thought, then perhaps she hadn't cared enough to look for him when she had needy, clinging Dante to worry about. That she had chosen to instead hide Dante in the closet in favor of searching for him also leaves him split; his faithful human heart vindicated, yet his mind always coming back to the poor defense the closet would have presented against any demons that came searching. Little more than a cage in which to corral Dante even without the flames.

Regarding his work, however, there is still much more to be done. Vergil is a new face in the field. Even with his claim to her legacy, there aren't many who remember Eva's contributions so much as her untimely death. He needs time to build his reputation before anyone will consider letting him glimpse their true treasures. In a way, it almost feels like the preparation to the time leading to Temen-ni-gru - like a goal that is just one step of many.

At least his skills are well suited to retrieving valuable finds. Items of demonic origin have always been valuable, but now they have come under demand for study in the wake of so many demon-related catastrophes over the past 40 years. That Vergil himself is directly responsible for two of said incidents and an accessory to a third is something he wisely chooses not to share. Allowing the humans access to demonic power has consequences that can ripple out in unexpected ways, but there are also not a great many humans like Nico, with the creative aptitude and ingenuity it takes to infer anything truly useful from a handful of fragmented remains. He brings in pieces of his or Dante's kills, and is usually paid a handsome amount once their authenticity has been verified. Dante hasn't complained about not having enough money for bills since the first payment came through.

The way his brother's mouth had dropped open when he'd seen the cash in Vergil's hand had been... intensely satisfying.

Vergil reaches over to review his list of unfulfilled requests, a hand resting comfortably on the Yamato's saya tied to his belt out of habit. As it turns out, bringing in even a small amount of consistently good finds is enough to turn a few heads. A number of his competition have begun to suspect that Vergil is in contact with a mercenary who collects his finds for him. Far be it for Vergil to disabuse them of their ignorance and blatant hypocrisy, no matter that the rumors have a half-measure of truth.

There are only three names on the list today, with a dozen more crossed out above them. All of them are requests for relatively easily acquired items. One of them, however, is a request for a number of items that, should they be used in combination, has interesting implications. Blindly, Vergil reaches over and grabs a book of rituals from the top of it's appropriate pile. A quick scan of the reference he seeks confirms his suspicions.

Someone is trying to attempt an invigoration ritual. Should they succeed, the caster would find themselves looking and feeling a number of years younger than they actually are proportional to the amount of phoenix tears used. Such rituals always have a cost, however. The cost for this one being that the same number of years will be subtracted from the caster's total lifespan. It was originally developed during the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans to give aging soldiers and generals one last hurrah before their untimely deaths. There are notes in the margins of the book, Eva's neat, looping script bemoaning a then-recent trend of misusing the ritual in misguided attempts at a sort of palpable Fountain of Youth.

Out of curiosity, Vergil checks the name of the requestor. Upon finding it, he has to raise an eyebrow. So Lorenzo is still alive, is he? The man should be nearing 70, if Vergil's math is right. With the amount of materials he's requesting versus the proportions laid out in his mother's books... Lorenzo will be lucky to live another year after this.

Vergil's lips twist up into an expression with more spite than is appropriate for a smile, teeth exposed in a menacing display. The memory of Dante's confession, that so many of their distant kin had dared to turn him away when he needed them, after they stole what never belonged to them, is still close to the surface. Vergil will take his money, the generous sum that is more than twice what the actual ingredients are worth, and perhaps even throw in a little something of better quality. Just to make sure that the ritual takes  _quite well_...

The scent of him hits Vergil's nose seconds before Dante opens his mouth. "Are we gonna be scrambling to hide a body here soon? 'Cause I just cleared out the closest demon nest yesterday."

From the doorway, Dante stares at him bleary-eyed over the top of one of the largest mugs he owns. The scent of fine espresso filters into the room, blending with heavy amounts of cream and the empty tang of artificial sweetener. The mug can easily hold 3 times the amount of coffee of a commonplace mug, and judging by the loose way Dante holds it, half of the contents are already gone. That causes Vergil's eyes to narrow slightly. One of the things that he had observed about his brother's daily routine was the near-daily consumption of some brand of coffee called bustile that seemed to start within a few days of their reappearance. It had originally only been a cup a day, but it seems like the more time passes, the more Dante's appetite for the drink seems to grow. Demons don't typically use drugs like caffeine simply because of the lack of effect - their systems purging the substance entirely within a matter of minutes. Even to one of half-demon constitution, Vergil has never known coffee to do more than offer a slight peek of awareness for a few moments before fading. Useful for getting himself upright after a long, frustratingly tedious night spent researching any rumors of their father's legacy. Not so good for much of anything else. If Vergil was going to enjoy something for its taste, he would have gone with ginger ale.

Vergil exhales a dismissive sound, closing the book in his hand and setting it on top of the orders list. "Perish the thought, Dante. All bodies take care of themselves eventually. In the meantime, I believe I've stumbled across another ward to add to the shop in mother's notes."

The look Dante gives him is not surprised or disturbed so much as put-upon and resigned. It breaks upon a wide-mouthed yawn that Dante quickly covers with the mug, hand coming up to rub his bruised eyes. "Please tell me this schematic is finished. I don't think I can hold the cops off anymore if the windows get blown out for a _third_ time."

"You say that as if there wasn't mold and filth encrusted in every mechanism and that they hadn't needed to be replaced anyway," Vergil counters, automatic, hiding his wince. He certainly hadn't meant to use the wrong translation on the first attempt at finishing one of Eva's old ward schemas. The second attempt had been bad luck more than anything. At least Morrison hadn't received anything more than minor scrapes and bruises when he had been thrown to the pavement. It certainly puts into perspective those occasions whenever they heard crashing and felt reverberations coming from the direction of their mother's workroom.

The same could not be said for some of the nick-knacks and wall-hangings, or for the unnecessarily large speakers under the stairs. The potted plants had been spared - Dante always had loved helping when greenery was involved - and now there was a proper bookshelf in the speakers' place, providing shelving space for all the books dispersed throughout the office area.

Vergil exhales slowly, fingers playing along the Yamato's ito, and reaches for one of the binders above his worktable. "To answer your question, yes. The ward was one of her completed ones. I have it right here if you must take a look."

Dante wanders over with another yawn, inspecting the drawings. He takes another sip of his espresso, only to purse his lips at the liquid. A few words are muttered under his breath, and the drink once again begins to steam.

The sight of such small, casual magic sends a pulse of gentle warmth radiating out from Vergil's chest, one that he is slowly starting to become increasingly familiar with. Vergil doesn't have as many clear, unblemished memories of their childhood as he would like, but one thing he remembers well enough is Dante as a young child, clinging to their mother's skirts and watching her perform small feats of magic as easily as she breathed. He remembers seeing their father's eyes trailing after Eva as she danced and sang the simple cantrips on light, easy feet that knew neither fatigue nor listlessness. Later, when he finally found a sense of rhythm, Dante had begun chirping his own spells right behind her, delighting every time something went right. His brother no longer performs his way through magic as he used to, but it is yet another point of comfort to know that Dante still practices his simple tricks.

It is comforting to know that even if Vergil has lost his way, become unseated and unmoored by his own well-intended ambition, some things would remain the same. It is just as grounding as the clash of their swords, helping him to find his place in the world he once thought he might never see again. There is power in knowing your place, Vergil thinks quietly to himself, feeling his brother's heat almost close enough to touch. There is power in this, even if it took losing it all twice over in order to see it.

This close, the subtle aroma of freshly pruned roses and drying lilac drifts over. Vergil inhales, eyes closing briefly. It is fascinating to parse the different scents that follow Dante wherever he goes, beneath the blood and steel, the animal musk and the menthol-tinge of demonic power in repose. He had not been surprised to learn that Dante had a tiny, fenced-off garden area behind the office, barely big enough to walk around in without stepping on some plant. Not when, as children, Dante had been fascinated by the process of growing their mother's herb garden. Vergil always knew when Dante came back from tending to it by the way it clings to his skin.

Not for the first time is Vergil glad at how speedily they were able to clear out and convert Dante's old guest room. Laying within the heart of Dante's bed, buried in a nest of pillows and sheets that all carried his brother's particular odor, had quickly become unbearable after the first allowance. Sleepless nights spent with his nose pressed against that scent, self-restraint the only thing keeping him from rutting against the mattress in an undignified display. Always, always, imagining how beautifully his own scent would sit upon Dante's skin; how it would blend into the sanctuary of Dante's sequestered enclosure. Vergil feels his brother's eyes on him every day. Just the memory of their attention draws forth something darkly possessive inside him, always wanting them upon his person. Only in the privacy of his room does he allow himself the touch of his own hand, the ache of yearning and inspiration bittersweet and woefully incomplete.

Once he is not so busy, Vergil promises himself. When he is more secure, he will approach Dante, and see where it leads them. The call of their split soul pulls them back together, a rubber band stretching and then releasing. His brother is as demon as Vergil is, no matter how tightly he cleaves to his humanity. He cannot imagine that Dante would reject him utterly, no matter how strangely he has been behaving.

Dante squints at the schema, mug lowering to the worktable. Vergil means to reach for it, to move it over so that it doesn't rest upon anything important and risk water stains. The meat of his thumb glances against flesh, feeling brief, exquisite heat and the whisper of calluses. The second his hand comes into contact with Dante's, however, Dante _flinches_. Vergil jerks his hand back, and with nothing to hold it steady, the mug teeters off the edge of the desk, smashing against the floor and sending hot coffee and sharp ceramic everywhere. Something drifts beneath the espresso smell and Vergil reflexively sucks the blood from his tongue after biting it.

It takes only a fraction of the amount of energy needed to summon a single spectral sword to chill the liquid into thick slush. "Ah, shit!" Dante curses before disappearing in a flash of red lightning. He returns a moment later, one hand clutching a roll of paper towels and a dustpan in the other. A few minutes later they have the mess contained and disposed of. Vergil takes care to run a wet cloth over the floorboards, both to pick up any minuscule stray shards and to prevent the floor from becoming sticky. They got to it before it could stain, thankfully, but Vergil suspects he will be smelling bustile coffee when working in this room for a while.

Pulling a piece of off-white ceramic out of his thumb, Dante glares ill-tempered at the remains of his coffee mug in the trashcan, dropping the shard in to join the rest. It is an expression startlingly familiar to how he was 24 years ago. Another fleeting flower of affection blooms within Vergil's chest. "Man, that was my best mug, too," Dante complains quietly. His unbloodied hand comes up to rub his eyes again, another, smaller yawn following. "Guess I must still be half-asleep or something."

"I'm surprised that's the case when sleeping seems to your only scheduled event when not hunting or tending to your plants," Vergil returns, eyes narrowed in skepticism.

"Fuck off, Vergil," Dante says cheerfully, petulantly, as only a life-long little brother can. He then leaves the room, no doubt in search of more of his morning elixir. Vergil watches him go in silence, a complex storm of emotion in his chest, and a single thought in his mind as pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place.

There's a subtle difference between an idle demon and a demon on the edge of exhaustion trying to get some rest - namely, the quality of their breathing.

Dante does not rest like he is merely idle. His chest moves too little and his muscles do not relax properly to enjoy every breath. He sits in his chair and dozes like he's trying to save energy, ready to spring into action the moment it's needed. Is this a side effect of having returned to the Underworld? Does he still think they need protecting? His brother's reaction did not smell of lethargy and sleep. Lethargy and sleep do not make Vergil's teeth itch and sharpen in his mouth.

It smelled of _fear_.

* * *

Having never been one to twiddle his thumbs where his brother is concerned, Vergil spends what time he can afford to take away from his work to just observe Dante's behavior. Of course, that means he must place his designs for Lorenzo's well-deserved restitution on the back burner, but Vergil considers himself a patient man. He has more important things to deal with at the moment.

He tests several peculiarities that he's observed over the past month. Dante notices, of course - always more clever than even Vergil ever gave him credit for before the fall, but does not confront him about the sudden pushing. Not directly, at least. He frowns, grumbles and whines and deliberately follows Vergil with his eyes. This strange passivity his brother displays is so uncharacteristic of the vibrant, arrogant youth he had once been. Vergil had been ready to chock it up to the lonely years that passed on without him. Even Dante would have had to grow up some time.

Nonetheless, the results he gets back from his little tests are... perturbing, to say the least.

And aggravatingly inconsistent.

The least anomalous and unexpected of the new behaviors is the thinly-disguised anxiety that seems to overtake Dante when Vergil disappears suddenly, or is gone for longer than he said he would be. It doesn't happen often, as potential clients call Dante away more often than contacts come for Vergil, but the rarity only makes the evidence more visible. Though it chafes his pride, he can admit that his brother's concerns are not without cause. Given the previously consistent results of his penchant for vanishing whenever it suited him, it's not unreasonable to consider why Dante would be reluctant to let him out of his sight.

It would take giving Dante some time and reassurance to realize that nothing was going to happen if he wasn't there to have Vergil's back to fix this, but Vergil has no doubts that it will be fixed.

They demonstrate with every spar that the two of them are among the strongest in this world. That kind of doubt cannot last long in the face of overwhelming evidence. Dante is stubborn, often to the point of foolishness, but not _that_ stubborn.

Of course, that is merely one note of many that Vergil has catalogued, now that he is taking stock. There is a part of him, the slowly reviving, undersized bones of an older brother that once knew his twin inside and out, that wonders why he hasn't noticed before now. The signs are everywhere he looks - from the amount of empty wine bottles that keep reappearing around the living space despite Vergil not personally witnessing a single drop being consumed, to Dante's constant assurances that he has all the day to day minutia handled and his slowly shortening temper, to the subtle ways Dante interacts with everyone who is not him.

Perhaps it is of less note than Vergil is giving it credit for, but Dante has stopped leaving his room without wearing at least long-sleeves and pants, even when the weather is still mild. There was also an occasion when he had attempted to move the curtain while his brother was showering to speak properly face to face, only for Dante to rip the opaque plastic sheet from his hand and slam it back closed hard enough to rattle the wall. There seems to be a refusal to allow Vergil to see his bare naked skin. Bizarre, given their first night back in the shop. Even more so when Vergil remembers very clearly the vain, almost voyeuristic young man who flaunted his body as if the sight of pale, unblemished skin was yet another weapon in his arsenal to waylay Vergil's quest.

More than anything, the thing that steals his peace and makes his stomach drop with unease is this - Dante refuses to let Vergil touch him casually.

It seems Dante has grown into a man who seeks contact rarely if he can help it. Another strange occurrence, given how prone to touch he was as a child. Even as a young man. The bite of demonic steel splitting skin and spearing organs is inevitable during their clashes, as is the occasional fist or kick thrown, or the collision of bodies as they toss each other around like the other weighs no more than feather. When the blood has dried and the weapons are sheathed, however, Dante almost visibly retreats into himself. He holds himself apart from the world around him, dancing just out of reach of everything but the ground beneath his feet. Only a few - Trish, Nero, the human girl that was once Dante's ward and Mary on the one occasion she saw fit to show herself - can pierce the distance his brother creates so easily. But when Vergil tries to extent his hand, offer the olive branch of contact that was once such an important part of their own, private language as to be unintelligible without it, an intrinsic link that comes naturally when allowed, even now...

There are no words to describe the way Vergil's lungs _ache_ with every refusal. Every instant of contact broken in favor of a greater distance and a throw-away excuse, every touch seen coming flowed around as if the briefest touch of skin on skin is an incurable poison. Worse yet are the touches left unacknowledged; the briefest of proximity torn from Vergil's grasp as Dante walks away as if he hadn't noticed.

He wants to sink his claws into Dante's skin, just to make him stay. Just to feel like the world isn't spinning further away from him with every inch Dante puts between them. Nothing else about the world has changed since Vergil returned, and yet every day that passes now that he's paying attention leaves his feet on less and less stable ground.

He has lost his anchor, he realizes in the twilight hours of the dawn, the siren's call of rest he once denied himself out of survival now a capricious, unreliable thing. The familiar chain that held him in place and kept his heart from straying is rusted by time and neglect. The thick links are dilapidated, some replaced with paltry segments that won't stand up against even the slightest strain. The chain is tightening - it feels like its going to break any day now. His heart skips and his chest quakes at the thought.

 

~~Once upon a time, Vergil thought he knew what it meant to be alone. Yet, now, surrounded by anything he's ever wanted since he lost everything as a child, Vergil wonders how he ever thought he understood the concept.~~

 

* * *

Not even their demonic heritage would allow Dante to deny himself true slumber forever. Vergil finds him passed out on the office couch in the early afternoon, head resting on his arm and limbs splayed out in a lazy sprawl. His beard is gone, trimmed the other day after Vergil snapped at him for complaining one too many times. His twin's clean-shaven face and unobstructed jawline are a handsome sight, even if the heavy agitation of another sleepless night makes off with his ability to appreciate it.

It is perhaps for the best. The lack of rest has diminished Dante's abilities dangerously. During their last spar, Vergil was able to disarm him and knock him to the ground with a pitiful amount of ease, his brother staring up at the sky as if wondering how he came to lie flat on his back. The last time Dante had dared to disgrace their bouts with such carelessness, Vergil ran him through with the Yamato and then again with the Rebellion in the pouring rain. This time, he had planted his boot in Dante's stomach hard enough to make him wheeze out a groan and let the Yamato's edge dance ever so gently across the base of his throat. The whisper of her touch parted pale skin briefly, trickles of enticing crimson blooming across his twin's skin, before Vergil pulled himself back and allowed Dante to climb to his feet.

Dishes clink quietly in the sink as he washes them, brow furrowed as the mindlessness of the action allows his thoughts to drift. He doesn't dare indulge in his usual habit of airing his musings to the uncaring, impartial air - not when the subject in question is a single room away. The look Dante's eyes had been... bizarre. Heat, banked embers, hidden by the way Dante couldn't seem to look directly at him, but also with a stillness that chills the nerves, like an wounded animal that knows it is being cornered and yet can find no escape. Like _Vergil_ was something to get away from, in that moment.

Vergil frowns. The look was gone by the time they returned to the shop. His usual irreverent air of geniality seemed to cling to him like a protective mist. Dante drifts by with such a casual sort of ease that one wouldn't know that he was already out of reach before it was too late to pull him back in. It is not a skill he had cultivated once upon a time. Not when he had wanted to be seen by Vergil more than anything. The change is... infuriating.

Something shimmers in the back of his mind, awareness flickering to life as it does when one catches movement out of the corner of their eyes. But nothing has moved. Vergil detects no signs of any threats. No one else should be inside the shop at the moment, and the only other demon that registers on his senses is-

... Ah.

They shared the same room when they were still very young. Their beds were pressed into the opposite corners of the room, but almost every morning their parents would find them occupying the same mattress. The two of them weened off this behavior slowly as they grew - Vergil because he was the elder of the two and was too old to share a bed, and Dante because he wanted the space. That didn't mean, however, that they didn't still sometimes find reasons to curl around one another during the nighttime hours.

Those times come back to Vergil now as he stares down at his brother's face, damp with sweat and tight with some complicated, undecided emotion. Like he can't decide whether to be angry, or horrified. His long limbs twitch in aborted gestures. His body is tense and ready for a fight. The scent of harried prey lingers thick in the hair. Vergil breathes through it until he can shunt it to the back of his mind. There's not enough room on the couch for Vergil to sit anywhere but the arms. Despite Dante's general state of being saying otherwise, their parents hadn't raised a heathen. He settles for kneeling beside the couch at Dante's head.

"Dante," Vergil says, calm and assertive. Such tones of voice have never failed to gain his little brother's attention before.

Dante remains locked in his dreams, visibly balking against some unknown phantom that dogs his slumber. A quiet whimper escapes his throat, strangled by fear, and Vergil can remain patient no longer.

"Dante," he repeats more firmly, reaching out a hand to touch Dante's face. No sooner do his fingers make contact that pain erupts in points across Vergil's forearm.

" _No!_ "

Hardened claws dig deep into his flesh, causing him to grunt as he resists the urge to pull back. Pale eyes stare at his chest, unblinking and unseeing, bloodless lips open in order to accommodate the heaving of his chest, demonic fangs just barely visible. The bittersweet aroma of fear sharpens into a dagger's point, a cornered animal ready to strike. Vergil forces himself into stillness and waits. Blood drips onto the couch and the floor, a steady, consistent pitter patter noise that contrasts the roar of it rushing through his ears.

When seconds pass and Dante shows no sign of letting go, eyes still glazed and wide enough to see the entire iris, Vergil wracks his mind. There used to be _something_ he would say or do to calm Dante down, right? "It's alright," he murmurs quietly. He tries to gradually lower his arm, but that just causes Dante's claws to dig in deeper.

"It's alright, brother," he says, feeling hardened nails gently scrape bone. Agonizing, but not unbearable. "I'm here. You're safe. Nothing is attacking you right now. There's nothing to be afraid of."

Vergil continues his mantra, a quiet stream of reassuring nonsense that's more background noise than an true attempt to reach out. It must be working. Slowly, Dante blinks once, twice, and then groans a sound like he's awakening from deep sleep. Claws retract and soften into human fingers, blood still dripping from the tips. He sits up with an exhausted grunt and rubs his face with a dirty hand. Dante smears Vergil's blood across his eyelids and the bridge of his nose before frowning. Upon drawing the hand back, he turns a concerning shade of pale.

"You were having a night terror," Vergil says in explanation, drawing Dante's attention to him. His brother startles, having only just now noticed his presence. His eyes flicker down to stare blankly at his blood stained arm. The punctures little more than fading pink blotches of color by this point. "You're still having them. Do they happen often?"

Dante was a child prone to strange night terrors in his earliest years. Neither Sparda, Eva nor the local physician could find an explanation as to why it happened, or why Vergil wasn't experiencing the same symptoms. Frequently, Vergil would wake in the middle of the night to find his brother crawling into bed with him, tears staining his cheeks and lips wobbling with residual fear. He would never remember what he dreamed about the next morning. Vergil can't remember there ever being more than one episode a night beyond the one that sent Dante seeking comfort in the first place. He had put them out of his mind after Dante had largely outgrown them after he turned 7.

Instead of answering his question, Dante gives a noncommittal noise and attempts to vigorously wipe his face with his shirt. It stains the cloth badly and doesn't even get all of the blood off. Frustration bubbles up from within Vergil's gut.

Vergil reaches out once more. "What was it about?"

"Nothing important," Dante retorts back testily, not even bothering with his usual deflecting charm for once. Just like that, Vergil feels his temper give with an almost audible snap.

Many things count as fatal flaws - the kinds of defects and pitfalls and short-sighted weaknesses that bring even the most formidable gods to their knees. Everyone has at least one. That Vergil can count no less than three within himself is something he's always resented; especially when love of his family is the reason Vergil survived his childhood isolation, when pride is the reason Vergil strove to become the protector his family needed and lost, and when anger is the reason Vergil had been willing to sacrifice _everything_ he had left for just a chance at justice.

Vergil had meant to bring this up later, once his thoughts were properly in order and Dante was more rested. Right now, though, a familiar wildfire burn scorches his insides. It causes his chest to quake and his hands to clench to hide their trembling. "You've been avoiding me," he accuses lowly, only just able to stop his teeth from gritting.

Dante looks him in the eye and says with frazzled resignation, "So what?"

There must have been some part of Vergil that hoped that Dante would deny it, even if it were still, obviously true. That he doesn't bother rends Vergil in a place he didn't know was still pristine and pure.

"I'm surprised that _you_ of all people have learned how to be so cold and distant," he says in a tone like arctic ice. He breathes slowly to suppress the shaking. "You refuse to let me in - you refuse to allow me to make an _attempt_ at proving to you that I am resolved to remaking myself, when the only thing I have done since returning to this world with you is try and carve out my own place within it. I forsook this world once upon a time, Dante. If I'm doing it now, it is primarily because this is what _you_ have always wanted. For us to be brothers again."

The stillness of a cornered, wounded creature once again infuses Dante's every fiber, his head lowered and shoulders tensing defensively. He looks at Vergil with eyes like a wild beast, skittish and untrusting and longing for escape. When he opens his mouth, it is to wound with the intent of driving away.

"Bullshit, Vergil," he spits as if his words are noxious, blinding venom. "You made it clear that you threw away that desire before even Temen-ni-gru. Whatever right you had to just be a brother, you lost it a long time ago."

Dante is standing from the couch by the time Vergil has managed to breathe through the worst of a pulse of agony that has nothing to do with blood and bones and flesh. His retreat is hurried. Clumsy. He can't make it more than 2 steps away before Vergil is on his feet and reaching out to stop him.

His fingers no more than close around his brother's wrist when Dante whirls around with an inhuman snarl, teeth turned to bestial fangs in a mouth far too human to contain them, claws tipping his fingers again and the prelude to scales forming bumps along his skin. In the air surrounding him, red energy sparks to life, forming whirling, half-finished summoned sword. Vergil's eyes widen as the shadow of great wings fall over him like feet dancing on his grave, his hand reflexively gripping his sword in preparation, before the flood of crimson demonic energy is forcibly reigned in so thoroughly he feels briefly dizzy in its absence.

" ** _Stop touching me,_** " Dante growls, his voice warped and echoing with demonic essentia, before that is coughed away as well.

 

~~Deep within, the familiar chain gives a terrifying creak as the paltry replacements crack under pressure.~~

 

The phone chooses then to ring. They both jump, whirling to stare at it uncomprehendingly. Dante takes in a few gasping breathes and hurries over before the caller can hang up. Putting receiver to his ear, he breathe out slowly before opening with what is clearly a practiced line. "Devil May Cry - what's the password?"

The client mist have the code, because Dante gives an empty, faintly breathless laugh. "Well well, you ma'am are in luck on such a fine day. You got a job for me?"

Light. Pleasant. Affable. As if just seconds before Dante hadn't been a hair's trigger away from tearing into him with his bare hands. Vergil can barely even recognize that voice as his brother's.

Vergil hadn't realized how much of a prevaricator his brother had become over the years. Not when, before, his shields and attempts misdirection had always seemed so obvious and transparent... A distant, insidious corner of his mind whispers that if such simple lies and masks come to Dante so easily... Then how much of their time together since Vergil's rebirth was truly real?

The call goes quickly with Dante jotting the specified location and payment details down. He doesn't try and haggle for a better price as he most often does, so either this is a repeat caller or he doesn't care enough put up a fuss. He leaves for the upper floor, and when he comes back down he's wearing a different shirt and his hands and face are once again clean. Without sparing Vergil a single glance, he picks up his guns and makes for the door.

"You've changed," Vergil says from his place on the couch, the Yamato clutched tightly in both hands across his lap. The air between them stifling. His words, idle and desolate, only give Dante's a moment's pause before he lets out a bitter chuckle.

"Haven't we all, Verg," he returns, head still lowered and shoulders still tense. "Haven't we all."

Dante leaves without another word, the door slamming closed hard enough to shake the walls behind him.

 

~~Deep within, Vergil feels that familiar chain, the one that held him in place and kept his heart from straying, with it's thick, broken links and paltry replacements, pull tight, tighter-~~

~~_break_.~~

 

Vergil allows his head to bow. His eyes water as his heart throbs, lonely and agonized. This time, no one is there to see his shameful display.

* * *

Dante is not back by sundown or sunup the next morning. Vergil finds himself adrift in a way he hasn't been since he was 18. The world is once again spinning far away from him, far beyond his reach, with nothing to anchor him to it. It feels like if he chose to, he could leave it far behind again and never once experience the urge to look back. That's the devil in his speaking, however. He knows better this time. It is dangerous for him to give in to such urges - with an entire city turned into a graveyard to serve as testament.

One thing is for certain - Vergil is not as welcome in his brother's territory as he once thought. He has been tolerated this long; given several opportunities to get back on his feet in the human world. He is thankful, even if the cause for such an invitation is now under question. Perhaps Dante had only meant to make sure he stayed out of trouble. It would certainly explain why he never liked him leaving.

Nothing to be done about it now.

Dante walks back into the shop just as his preparations are complete, using a spell to shrink his luggage down to a more manageable size. It hadn't been easy getting all of his occult inventory properly sealed away and prepped for transit. There are a few shirts and a pair of pants that he had to leave out of his packing in order to fit everything else. At least he won't be leaving anything important behind.

"What are you doing?" Dante asks him, completely devoid of all emotion. The mid-morning sun streams in from the open door, highlighting his outline and obscuring his features, the smell of gore following behind him like a miasma. Even so, Vergil imagines that he can see a frown.

He turns away again so that he doesn't have to look at his brother's face. "I had some time to contemplate things yesterday," he says, stuffing the miniature trunks in his pocket. The shrinking spell had been a useful one when he needed to pick up and leave suddenly as a child. Being hunted by Mundus' demons had taught him how to be efficient in his moving. "I have been taking advantage of your hospitality for long enough, haven't I? Perhaps it's about time I struck out. Expand my horizons and see what opportunities come my way."

"Vergil-"

"I'm not returning to the Underworld," he assures, cold and flat. The frozen numbness that pervades his being feels almost like black magic drowning his human heart. He can't bring himself to think about that right now. The Yamato is a solid weight in his hand, and he brushes his fingers over her sheath to feel her repaired form pulse in answer. "You can put that fear out of your mind if you have it. There is nothing for me there."

" _Vergil-_ "

"Nero has agreed to serve as a temporary host until I can find my own residence. If you have need of me, I will likely be there for the next several weeks."

Dante cuts back in, voice rough-pitched with thick emotion. "Why are you leaving in the first place?"

Anxiety. Fear. Of course Dante still fears letting Vergil out of his sight. Why wouldn't he? The only thing his brother has to guard himself against these days is Vergil. It's better to keep your enemy at your front than at your back. All this time, and Dante has trusted him so little...

"Why not?" Vergil returns, still in the same flat, dull tone. "It's not like you actually wanted me here."

Silence is his answer, just as he thought, and that's all Vergil can take.

With a slow exhale and a swift motion, the Yamato's edge skims across the empty air in front of him once, twice, opening a portal to a destination of his choosing. It's only relatively recently that he's gained enough strength to take advantage of this particular feature. If he had attempted this when he was 19, even leaving aside his goal of attaining Force Edge, he might have killed himself with the amount of energy it takes to rip open a large enough hole in space-time to pass safely through. Now, it drains less than a 20th of his full reserves.

"Goodbye, Dante," he tosses over his shoulder. Vergil steps into the swirling light, letting the roar of maimed and dismembered reality drown out what might have been a cry behind him.

* * *

"I didn't..."

His heart beats painfully in his chest as he stares dumbly at where Vergil once stood, arm outstretched in yet another vain attempt to stop him. His lungs are several sizes too small for his chest and he needs to pump them as fast as possible to keep up with the pulse of his ice-cold blood. Every rapid-fire breath he takes just drives the adrenaline and fatigue higher until he's dizzy all over again. His knees shake almost uncontrollably. The only reason he isn't on the floor right now is because he's locked them straight. The wounds he earned for his stupid missteps and inattention throb despite having healed half-a-day ago. His left palm and stomach _burn_ with the whisper of demonic steel.

 

 _~~he's gone he's gone you did this he's gone you did this he's gone you did this he's gone~~ _ ~~~~

"I didn't... mean it like that..."

He just wanted Vergil to leave him alone for a minute. He wasn't used to having his brother around again. An entire month of blissful agony, sleepless nights trying to evade the night terrors that he thought he had finally managed to put behind him 5 years ago, all made worth it by every second that Vergil was alive and happy beside him. An entire month and he still wasn't used to waking up not alone. He just needed some time by himself to pull his head back together again. He hadn't meant what he said.

He hadn't meant to... He hadn't wanted to... The dream...

 

 ~~_The flash of Force Edge's blade sparking against black demonsteel armor. A face, silver-haired, cracked and corpse-like and yet still so beautiful. Crimson blood that smells half-human, but that can't be trusted either. Trish looked/smelled/sounded like Eva but she **wasn't**. _ ~~ ~~_A haunting, familiar scream that has been chasing him in his nightmares for years. An unmistakable amulet that falls to the ground and rips his chest open bloodlessly.  
_ ~~

~~_You did this you did this you did this you did-_ ~~

 

He just... wanted to deal with his dream. If he could do that, then the day would have been fine. The dreams were getting harder to suppress, even after he resorted to drinking himself stupid every night he couldn't afford to stay awake, but they weren't that bad yet. Why had he been an idiot and passed out on the couch like that? Why can't he just let Vergil touch him without feeling like he's going to rip apart at the seams?! Now Vergil is-

Red sings through his veins, wild and out of control, cool menthol turned to burning sulfur without his attention to keep it contained. A tide like the call of a trigger threatening to sweep him away - a flood of power that will try to burn his humanity out of his blood if he would just let it. It was already getting harder to keep his power under control - now it feels like he has to scramble and dig bloody, broken nails in just to keep anything beyond the bulk of it inside. Only a little manages to escape this time, red lightning and burning embers making his senses come _alive_ , but even that is _too much_.

It's too much. He can't-

Between one blink and the next, Dante finds himself standing in front of the door to Vergil's-

To... to his guest room. The room is clean when he opens the door. The floor is swept and even the sheets have been changed. There are no personalizing items - no pictures, no books or artifacts, not even that stupid little William Blake Author's Edition bobble-head Dante got Vergil on a whim one day. Even Vergil's smell is largely gone - paper and the air after a lightning strike, running water and the faintest hint of Dante's roses, all buried beneath chemical cleaners that Dante modified to take the edge off of dried demon guts. It smacks so painfully of his brother's obsessive tendencies that Dante just has to giggle. And then chuckle. And then laugh, until it feels more like he's sobbing than laughing despite his eyes remaining dry.

Vergil is gone.

 

~~**_you did this._ ** ~~

 

His body convulses suddenly, his diaphragm tightening on his empty stomach painfully. Dante jack knifes, one hand clutching the door frame and the other going around his stomach. He coughs up bitter, stinging acid onto the floor, wretched noises escaping as he heaves, tears leaking from his eyes from the force. It smells terrible, even considering the kinds of odors he regularly encounters. It sends his body into another heaving fit, forcing more acid up, and then a third. By the fourth and fifth retches, nothing comes up apart from spit and mucus.

Dante stares down at the mess on his floor, and giggles at his own piteousness. The sound is miserable, even to his own ears.

"I need a drink," he says to himself, voice too light and too strange. Like he's just discovered he's out of pens or gun oil. He pushes himself away from the guest room. He's stumbling on legs as wobbly as a newborn's. It's only the hand he braces against the wall that prevents him from falling flat on his face. Bone-deep exhaustion pulls at every fiber of his being, begging him to sleep, to rest, to do _something_ so that he is no longer up-right with vision that spins like he's already 5 bottles deep into a binge. Just the knowledge that he has yet another mess to clean up makes him want to collapse in bed and never wake up again.

He can't. Not if he doesn't want the nightmares hounding him again. Not without Vergil there to set him right when he wakes up.

He'll clean that up later. Right now, he needs a drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D


	3. ... Are The Seeds From Which...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the people of both AO3 and the Spardacest Server. Ya'll make writing so very worth it. As thanks, let's begin with the process of "It Gets Better"... for one of them, at least. This chapter is a super long one and I'm so sorry, but my muses just _wouldn't stop_. T.T
> 
> We've got art!!!  
> [By the lovely Cerithidia on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Ceri_Obt/status/1148925427387260929)  
> There was art by someone else as well, but unfortunately I don't have a link for it and I don't feel comfortable posting it without a link to give credit. Even so, I love it all the same!

Nero's apartment is just large enough for a temporary guest room to be set up in the loft. Vergil has to share space with dusty storage containers of clothing, uniforms, strange tools and unused bric-a-brac, but some quick reorganization means that they were able to squeeze in room for a small table, a chair and a single mattress with no frame or box spring. The air is humid and almost choked with dust without the loft's single window open, but it has a nice view of the cobbled streets outside. Like this, he can sit the chair down here and watch the humans as they go about their daily business unseen. He even has space to take out and use some of his materials and projects. It's not the worst place he's ever stayed in, cobwebs and uninsulated walls not-withstanding. Certainly better than sleeping on whatever stretch of dirt or concrete was relatively clear of rubble, or in rooms without functional air conditioning in the middle of June.

It is a private space; one that allows him to accomplish his work, sleep and eat undisturbed-

"Hey! Tall, pale and broody! Dinner's almost ready!"

\- for the most part.

Nicoletta waves one of her half-finished prototypes at him, striding up into his interim bedroom to begin rifling around in one of the storage containers clearly marked with a large " **N. G.** ". Vergil can help but grimace at the rudeness, instinct clamoring to pin the intruder down and remove her. He reminds himself that she is just a human, no matter how brilliant, and of the lesson from two different perspectives that Nico is just... Nico.

"Didn't Kyrie remind you just this morning that inventions do not belong at the table?" Vergil shoots back, closing his notebook and returning the grotesque-looking dagger he was studying to his artifact chest. Not taking any chances with several curious children in the house, he mutters a locking spell that will keep them out of the chest even if they do manage to sneak past his son's ever-watchful eyes.

Nicoletta groans loudly, pouting at him from where she's elbow-deep in her large tool chest. "Ya'll like to jump on me about that, but I don't see you complaining 'bout my table manners when it comes time to use my babies."

Manners poking at him, Vergil decides to leave his jacket on his chair. He'll retrieve it later before he goes to sleep and the humid air grows colder. "How fortuitous it is, then, that I have no need of your "babies". I can remind you whenever I want."

"Yeah yeah, so you say. Just you wait, though! One day, you're gonna find yourself in need of my tech and you're not gonna have it 'cause you were too busy nitpicking me to ask. _Nicely,_ " she says moodily, before the cloud of petulance cracks and an avaricious smile brightens her face. How her moods seem to change so quickly used to almost make him dizzy as V. Even as a whole, stable person, Vergil still finds himself waiting to become properly inured to her ways. "Speaking of needs, you still need to show me those scraps you and Nero been gettin' your mitts on recently. You know. As payment for haulin' your ass around as V."

This again. Vergil grabs the Yamato and ties her carefully to his belt, making sure she is in full view. "Wasn't I already paying you for a chance to use your Divinity Statue? How did you even find one, anyway? Those priceless artifacts come from before my father's rebellion against Mundus. Only so many of them still remain with the secret of their creation lost to time, let alone ones so small."

"Wouldn't you like to know," Nicoletta snorts, always so foolishly brave in the face of things she should be more careful of. It might have been somewhat endearing once upon a time, if...

_(A brilliant smile that knows no fear; that meets his challenge just because it was issued in the first place. Whooping and laughter the closest thing to a symphony in the dead air of the Underworld. Bright, brilliant eyes like his own that seek him out, the mirrored soul that completes his just by being nearby on full display within-)_

Breathe, he reminds himself through the pang of pained longing that even now cuts down to bone, forcing his lungs to inhales even as they want to expel all breath from his body. Breathe.

It might have been endearing if it didn't grow bothersome quickly. Honestly, the woman had best be glad he was somewhat indebted to her from his time as a weak and desperate human. She crows in victory at finding the tool she was looking for and slams the lid closed. "You gonna show me the goods or what? Uh... Later, of course. Don't talk now, we got dinner to eat! Those brats aren't stealing my bread rolls again!"

Before Vergil can open his mouth to protest her presumptions for the ninth time, Nicoletta is already jumping down the steep folding stairs to the lower floor. She lands with a thud, causing Nero to begin shouting from further in the house. That in turn sets _her_ off on her own tirade of teasing and jabbing that will inevitably only be ended when Kyrie has to intervene to keep the peace. His son's house is a strange one - hectic and noisy, almost constantly in a state of barely-controlled chaos only kept in check by a combination of mutual agreement and trust. The three children housed here, Carlo, Julio and Kyle, simply add to the disorder as multiple beings try to associate and co-habitate with one another. There are few of its like in the demon world, even among the higher-thinking or more social devils. Sometimes, Vergil can't help but wonder if he hadn't made a mistake seeking temporary shelter here rather than simply booking a hotel.

He follows at a more sedate pace, keeping his steps light out of habit. He follows the powerful scent of shrimp with undercurrents of pasta, tomatoes and spicy chiles to the dining area. The scene he comes across in the kitchen is exactly what he expected - Nero and Nico both sniping at each other from across the dinner table while the younger children cheer one or the other on. Kyrie finishes loading part of the contents of a large pan onto the eldest child, Carlo's, plate before sending him off and calling over Julius for his own helping.

The sight is homely, comfortable in the way that Vergil hasn't borne witness to in decades; had given up hope that he would ever witness again. Nero and his beloved have proven to be patient, adaptable guardians despite their inexperience, and for all her protests over the children's mischief, Nicoletta looks after them with an eye for bullshit that matches even Nero's. She's started taking Julius under her wing, instructing him on the basics of general mechanics while she works. It is not quite the tight-knit coalition, each parent equal-parts teacher and protector, that Eva and Sparda employed when raising their offspring, yet it still maintains that same cohesion and balance. Vergil cannot help but think they would have approved, had they gotten the chance to see this.

Not one of them shares a drop of blood, and yet here they are - a family. It hasn't stopped feeling like he's intruding once since he came here. It's why he spends his time either in the loft or searching the city for connections and living quarters. The lump in his throat and the hollow burn in his heart is costly in what it takes from him to conceal.

Something moves close to him, almost coming into his space. When Vergil glances down, large brown eyes stare back up at him from where the youngest watches him. He hadn't wanted to learn their identities when he first arrived, too preoccupied with nursing the raw wound that had opened within his chest, stubborn pride the only thing keeping him from clawing desperately for the broken remnants of the chain that once bound him to his brother. However, being in the house means that he can often hear the going's on within it. Names became linked to voices, and voices inevitably became linked to faces. "Kyle," Vergil greets stiffly, awkwardly.

"You always stand here when it's time to eat. Are you waiting to see if someone will let you in?" It is a strange thing, a child's unadulterated curiosity. Unhindered by things such as tact and diplomacy quite yet. Observant, too - disturbingly so. Vergil doesn't know if he should be discomforted or impressed.

"It is polite for a guest to not disturb his host overmuch," Vergil replies, eyeing the boy carefully. The 5-year old laughs at him and grabs his hand, the contact sending an unpleasant frisson up his arm. The first time one of the children touched him, he had jerked away and teleported across the room, earning him a dirty look and attitude from Nero for the rest of the day. Since then, in order to keep the peace, Vergil has tolerated some limited contact, no matter how much his skin wants to crawl. A similar event occurs every time he has to shake one of his associates hands after a meeting about business. The only person who hasn't evoked that similar kind of reaction is his brother. The fact that it happens at all is... irritating.

"Don't be silly. Come and eat, grandpa Vergil!"

Oh, how he dearly wishes Kyle wouldn't call him that... That he is a father with a son he has actually met is one thing...

(Two weeks in Fortuna and  _still_ he hasn't found a single trace of Nero's mother or her "family". Yet another thing Vergil has to look into. All this business keeps his mind occupied, at least. There's little to no room for heavy, useless emotions when he still has people to find and retribution on Lorenzo to execute. He's almost got the perfect high-quality replacement ingredient...)

"Kyle, what have I told you about pestering Mr. Vergil?" Kyrie sighs with resigned patience.

"Grandpa Vergil is being silly," the child responds plainly, accepting a plate with his share of dinner with a chirped thanks. He then scampers off to the large dining table where the rest of the family is waiting.

The smile on her face is reserved when she looks at him. The teasing tone of her voice is anything but. Time has shown him that his son's beloved is nothing if not a wonderfully pleasant host. "Can I assume you're going to be eating upstairs again, "grandpa Vergil"?"

Vergil graciously ignores the teasing and takes a plate to retrieve his own share. It smells good; the odor of the shrimp mixing well with the tomatoes and chiles and the pasta doesn't look or feel overdone. If he remembers correctly, this recipe is a Fortuna classic. "I usually do."

"Perhaps you might sit with us tonight?" Kyrie suggests lightly, finishing off the rest of the pot. "I think Nico was hoping to convince you to let her study your sword? Nero has been trying to talk her out of it for hours, but I know he misses the Yamato. He's the one who fixed her, and she has saved his life many times."

The way his gut jolts uncomfortably at the idea of letting the Yamato leave his side is almost enough to make him lose his appetite. He can't remember the first and last time he had ever been parted from her, but the raw, factual knowledge of what transpired combines with a sinking dread that leaves his hands tightening around his plate reflexively. He sets it down to reach for the cupboard holding their drinking glasses and pours himself a cup of water from the tap as there's not a pitcher handy. If one hand drifts down to touch and refamiliarize himself with how her hilt fits in his hand, he doesn't bring attention to it. "Ms. Goldstein would be better off studying what demonic fluids are and are not safe for humans to touch lest she is forced to discard yet another pair of work gloves and spend another week recovering."

Beside him, Kyrie hums quietly in agreement, sparing a glance at the table behind them. The children are too wrapped up in the entertainment of whatever Nicoletta and Nero are arguing about. Nero sends a speculative look in their direction, but Kyrie is able to reassure him with an easy smile. He returns to his sparring partner without a fuss.

"And Nero?" She asks him, lightly so as to not be seen as pushy yet still not allowing herself to be ignored. Sparda would have approved of her persistence, if nothing else.

He takes his plate and turns towards the table. "... Perhaps. I suppose I've been so busy that I still have not properly tested his skills."

Vergil had been weakened by his fight against his brother, after all; the strength of the Qliphoth's fruit matched by the combined fury of their father's sword and his brother's considerable strength. It had also quite possibly been the first time Nero had achieved his true demon form. It will be interesting to see what has become of his skills now that he has had time to become adjusted to it. If he gives a good enough show, Vergil might be convinced to... let him see the Yamato once again. In appropriate gratitude for having been the one to resurrect her, of course.

When he looks over to her, Kyrie is giving him a faintly exasperated look, flatly unimpressed. "I think I see where he gets it from now," she says idly. "Come on, dinner is getting cold!" She makes her way over to take her place next to Nero. His entire body language softens instantly, a light brightening his eyes whenever he so much as feels her nearby, and it reminds him so much of how Sparda once gazed upon at Eva-

_(Shaggy hair that he longs to feel under his fingers. A strong, solid form that he longs to hold again him. Aged lines in a face that seems to become years younger when their blades clash. Laughter that he wants to hear forever more and lips he's dreamed of every day since he first learned that they still drew breath. )_

\- that he is... hesitant to intrude.

Even so, the surprised, pleased gleam that steals across his son's face when he sets his plate down is encouraging.

* * *

Dinner goes by in seemingly no time at all. Julio is the only one who puts up a stink about eating all of his dinner, and Nero manages to handle the situation well enough to where it doesn't become a big interruption. True to her word, Kyrie was right about Nicoletta trying to talk him into handing over the Yamato for a time, "even just a few minutes," she says, but Vergil makes sure to keep his body between them at all times. Kyle seems particularly interested in their back and forth. Then again, the child has been unusually fascinated by Vergil since he arrived. Always nearby and coming up with the strangest comments.

After dinner, the children are ushered off while Nero drags Nicoletta's away to do some more repair work on the van after the latest hunt led to the vehicle being flipped several times. Before he goes, Nero presses a chaste kiss to Kyrie's temple and nuzzles briefly into her hair. The sound of her complaints and insistence of the van's integrity follows them until the door to the garage slams behind them.

Because he's not a freeloader, Vergil stays behind to help with cleaning the dishes rather than return to the loft immediately. The task is menial and gives his mind ample room to wander. His search for living prospects have so far been uninspiring. He has no desire to continue living in Fortuna despite the ease of access to the Order of the Sword's research into Devil Arms and human conversion experimentation, or having his son close by. Likewise, the potential in the nearest coastal cities and towns leaves something to be desired, whether in terms of space or location. That even one of his potential new apartments manages to have up-to-date alliances and is pest free seems like a miracle to him at this point, and he's only been looking for 2 weeks.

He's still not sure about the town that particular apartment is in. Laire seems like a decent if small place - the kind of town where everyone knows everyone. Certainly innocent on the surface. Experience tells him that those types of locations are always the ones with the darkest undergrounds. It might be worth looking into, if that's the case.

Kyrie hands him another dish. They haven't looked at each other once since beginning their task. "Thank you for sitting with us for dinner tonight."

Vergil hums curiously, rinsing the soap off the plate in his hands under the faucet spray.

"He doesn't say anything, but I know it makes Nero happy to have you around," she says around the clink of the ceramic colliding with metal underwater and the muted scrape of steel on steel.

His hands accept a cup to rinse automatically, careful to keep their skin from touching. Skepticism fueled by doubtful cynicism has his brows raising. "I pulled his arm off."

Beside him, Kyrie breathes in and out slowly before replying. "You did. Even so, the fact that you're here means a lot to him. He always had my brother and I growing up, but I knew we weren't going to be replacements for the family he didn't have. Willingly-adopted extensions, but not replacements."

Vergil hums quietly in acknowledgement. No mention of Nero's mother here, either, but he's not exactly surprised this time. He then looks at her carefully from out of the corner of his eye. "You often speak about Nero's feelings on the matter of my presence here. What about you?"

Her head jerks quickly to look up at him, clearly surprised at having been asked. Kyrie bites her lips as if to keep the words locked inside. Her gaze drifts away as she visibly wrestles with herself. Vergil shuts the faucet off to not waste anymore water, but when no answer seems forthcoming he opens his mouth to retract the question and excuse himself.

"I still haven't forgiven you for what you did to him that day," she tells him finally, stopping him in his tracks. Kyrie stares intently into sudsy water, as if looking at him longer than necessary is intolerable. Her hands clench tightly around the dishrag until her knuckles turn white with tension. "I can't help but be _angry_ that you're here in my home. I said you could stay here, and I've tried putting things in the past like Nero and Nico have, but... I still can't go into the garage without seeing blood splattered all over the ground and on the walls and ceiling. He was bedridden for _weeks_. No matter how much I called out to him, he wouldn't wake up..."

Something in his chest tightens painfully. "You felt helpless that you couldn't protect him."

"Yes," she admits, steadfast despite the rawness of her voice. Her shoulders tremble and her body bows as if bending beneath a great weight. The air fills with the scent of bitter, frustrated tears. "Rationally, I know there's nothing I could have done. I've long come to accept that I don't have what it takes to join him in this world of demons and humans, so I've been trying to become stronger in other ways. Simpler ways. Even so... You were already gone, and yet I couldn't stop _shaking_ long enough to- just like when Credo-"

Kyrie reaches over for the hand towel on the counter next to her and wipes her eyes, sniffling faintly. "I don't forgive you. But I also can't let myself be too mad because, for all you don't say anything to anyone, I think you regret doing it."

Now it's Vergil's turn to be surprised. His body almost seems to flinch around to face her and his hand falls on instinct to wrap around the Yamato's sheath. Denial is right there on the tip of his tongue. Yet it fails to pass his lips when Kyrie meets his shuttering gaze squarely. Her characteristic gentle brightness has been put away in favor of the kind of bedrock solidity that is only born when someone witnesses their own personal hell and survives long enough to learn its lessons. "What gave you that impression?" Vergil asks, fingers tightening around hardened wood defensively.

"I've seen you trying," Kyrie says, turning to face him as well. She looks at him as if she's trying to puzzle him out, taking in the minor tenseness of his muscles that he tries to relax. She must see something to cause an unreadable expression to pass over her face, before it is covered by resolve. "You try and pay some of our bills. You don't let him in close, but you also don't push Nero away when he wants to talk to you about something. You've been more tolerant of the children's antics since Nero got mad at you. You listened to my suggestion to eat with us when I said Nero is happy to have you. Those aren't the actions of a person who doesn't care."

"He _is_ my son," he replies dismissively to mask his perturbance. Given her disquiet over having to host him, it makes sense that she would be watching his actions closely. It's what he would have done had he been forced to tolerate a threat in his territory. "I should be making some effort, shouldn't I?"

"You didn't have to," Kyrie counters gently. At this point Vergil doesn't know what she's doing. First she says she doesn't forgive him and now she's, what, commending him? "Carlo's mother certainly didn't."

Vergil narrows his eyes at her, faintly irritated. "You think you know who I am."

In response, a knowing, tired smile steals across her face. "Nero does the exact same thing when he's trying to hide how he's feeling. You both even have the same expression."

"I'm not Nero."

"You're not. But you're enough of each other than you seem to have certain things in common."

... How is he supposed to respond to that?

With nothing else to say, they finish the dishes in awkward silence. The air still feels tense, bloated with words left unspoken for the moment, yet it somehow also manages to feel like it is easier to breathe. After the pots, tableware and cutlery have all been dried and put in their respective places, Kyrie informs Vergil that she is going to spend the rest of the evening relaxing on the couch. He stops her before she can leave through the doorway completely.

"I will not put him, or you, in that position again," Vergil vows from his place still at the sink, the lump in his throat dissuading him from being louder than a murmur. She stands so still he wonders if she even heard him.

"... Thank you," Kyrie replies simply, sincerely, and walks away without another word.

If he thinks about it, this was perhaps the most honest conversation he's had in... quite some time.

* * *

Waking up to the taste of something rotted and dead in his mouth quickly becomes part of Dante's routine after Vergil leaves. As it turns out, drinking enough potent booze to kill a couple dozen lesser men is a good way to knock oneself out into a sleep that is, if not dreamless, then as least blurred enough that he can't remember anything the next morning. Bottles of Everclear start outnumbering the remaining bottles of his old man's wine by the first week. The last time he'd gone on a bender this bad, it had been just after-

 

~~_It's over. He doesn't even have a body to bury and it's all his fault. It should have been so_ obvious _; he had taken his helmet off for fuck's sake. He should have been able to recognize his other half in an instant, but like a complete and utter_ failure _he played it safe and refused to believe what was right in front of his eyes. Now his brother, his stupid, proud, beautiful brother, is gone. Their mother has been avenged, but that ugly, smoke-scented satisfaction pales in comparison to the creeping, noxious horror that **he's gone** and once again it's **all his fault-**_~~

 

Well... It's been a long time. Dante honestly can't say he gives enough of a rat's ass to stop himself from tumbling down this slope again.

Downstairs, the phone rings. The sound barely catches on the edge of his consciousness, utterly failing to draw his complete attention, let alone rouse his motivation to leave the nest he's built up over the years. He's going to have to get up sooner or later. There are bills that need paying and he has jobs that need doing. Morrison tried knocking on his door a few days ago, and he's already getting very threatening calls from Lady about his sudden radio silence. Even so, familiar exhaustion drags at his limbs; a sweet siren song of apathy and inertia that promises rest without ever delivering on it. Like this, the only thing Dante can bring himself to do is press his face into the few pillows that still bear the faintest traces of paper and the air after a lightning strike and running water and wallow in his misery. The red of his power is placid as a pond when he can't feel anything at all.

He could go after Vergil. He knows exactly where his brother is at the moment. When he managed to pull himself away from the bottle long enough to have a single sober thought, the first thing he did was call the kid up to make sure that Vergil really had gone to Fortuna. He could go there right now, confront Vergil and try to convince him to come back again. They wouldn't even have to really fight. Knowing them, though, they probably would and that would be okay, too. It's normal for them. Dante could do something - finally show him everything he has wanted to show since they were teenagers. Finally say or - or do the things he never thought he would get the chance to say or do because of his own foolishness. He could do it, _right now_. If only... If...

... If only he just wasn't so _tired_.

Dante has spent most of his life chasing after his brother - always struggling to follow his distant, ever bright-burning star. How tragic the irony is, then, that as soon as he finally managed to catch up, Dante couldn't stop the cloying black void that has long since hollowed him from the inside out from driving Vergil even further away. He wants to be, but he's not surprised to find he's been left behind again. He doesn't particularly like himself either.

* * *

Vergil hasn't taken more than a single step into the apartment before Nicoletta falls on him with a tangible buzz of excitement. Beside him, Kyrie holds back a subdued giggle.

Her training is proceeding steady, if at a slow pace. Magic comes naturally to her, with song the medium from which the well of power that exists within all living beings springs forth within her. Enchantments respond to her bidding with a readiness Vergil has seen in few. That being said, her strict religious teachings have damped her potential thus far. Magic has long been viewed unfavorably in Fortuna despite it's faded, far-flung glory as one of the greatest enchanted cities in the world under Sparda's rule. For ages now, periodic witch hunts have taken place to rid Fortuna of the "heathens" that threaten her people with their "devil's craft". Clans and covens continue to exist within the city walls, of course, but it's doubtful that it will ever become what it once was without concerted effort.

That Kyrie has proven to be a capable if somewhat reluctant student is perhaps a small miracle. The enemies of House Sparda are many; if they think they see an opportunity, they will not hesitate to take what advantage they can.

Of course, that does nothing to help his current predicament.

"Get your hands _off_ of me," Vergil growls lowly at Nicoletta, double-checking to see that the Yamato is tied securely to his belt and that she is firmly settled in her sheath. He's just about ready to burst down the hall with a buzz of gossamer blue energy to get away from the hands on his back when Nicoletta slips past him and starts relentlessly pulling him towards the garage entrance. Her grip is strong for a human, firm and vice-like from long hours spent tinkering with her machines. This close, Vergil can smell how her cigarettes have almost managed to overpower the engine oil that stains her clothing, hairspray, and the pepper sting of some fire demon parts she must have gotten her hands on.

"Nope," she chirps brightly, letting go just as he's about to yank his arm back to open the door, and pulls him on through by a fist in his vest. Vergil teleports to the ground just so avoid the humiliation of stumbling on the stairs. The urge to draw his sword is strong, and his bared teeth sharpen in his mouth in a threatening display.

"Calm your tits, V," she says, blithe, just as fearlessly, stupidly bold as she always is as she quickly makes her way over to a work table that has many different, disparate elements. Vergil thumbs the Yamato's tsuba and counts down from 20. "I could use a little of that expertise of yours for a project of mine and you've been gone all day with the lady of the house! It's weird that you're so buddy-buddy with her all of a sudden, ya know. What, you two decide to braid each other's hair or something?"

Huffing with irritation, Vergil crosses his arms over his chest and scowls his disapproval. "I don't believe that is your business. You couldn't have waited the 2 minutes it would have taken for me to at least put my boots and coat away?"

She throws her hands up the in air with entirely too much enthusiasm and crows, "Progress waits for no one!"

He has to resist the urge to grind his teeth. It's like dealing with his brother at his most childish - all cock-sure attitude and blind haste. Once again, Vergil finds himself staying his hand only because of the target of his ire's relationship with his family. He resolutely ignores the part of his mind that wants to remind him of the times he once found such a thing charming, when warn by-

Nicoletta tosses him a rolled-up bundle of papers to look through, leaning back on the desk to light another of her foul-smelling cigarettes. The odor will linger for hours, especially with the garage door closed as it is right now. Nero will inevitably kick up a fuss about her smoking in the house despite the rule against it when he smells it later, and yet she does it anyway. If Vergil didn't have a contrary, rebellious younger brother of his own to serve as an example, such behavior would be confounding. "That's what I'm working on now. It's a prototype for a new Devil Arm-like weapon made from some of the scraps Nero gives me. You help me out and I'll give you some of the leftover parts of a wind demon I don't need for your little project."

Vergil narrows his eyes at her sharply. "What makes you think I have a project going on? _Or_ that, even if I did, I would accept anything of yours."

She grins like a cat who's just caught the canary, head tilted playfully to the side. Nicoletta takes a long drag from her cigarette and exhales smoke in his direction. Vergil wrinkles his nose against the smell. " _Because_. You been looking through Red Queen's old schematics. They were moved a little last time I looked. Considering that both Nero and I are the only ones who could possibly need them, and we haven't needed them for months, _and_ that the kids know better than to fiddle with the stuff on this worktable... That just leaves _you_ , Mr. "I Think I'm Sneaky". Besides, a wind element is a nice compliment to her Exceed function, don't you think? A way to stoke the flames even hotter."

Insufferable, clever little...

In an effort to ignore the smugness radiating off of her, Vergil forces himself to turn his attention on the schematics in his hands. The more he looks, the more he finds his reluctant estimation of her abilities climbing. The actual design is simple, little more than an ornate wand crafted from bone and ivory, but the calculations are where the true methodology lies. The essence of the blood used in the infusion process, to give the wand its focused power. The demon's tusks, cut into a specific number of sections and all carved into seemingly ornamental sections that have the important task of regulating the wands power, preventing overload. The length of the wand is arbitrary, as is the stylized grip, but it still maintains a certain aesthetic that Vergil has seen in Nicoletta's work - functional, but with comfort and some modern flair. When used, the wand would give the wielder the ability to call the four winds to their command. When used well, one might even be able to exert some will over the local weather.

Even most demons underestimate the amount of effort it takes to make a Devil Arm from scratch, without the use of a demon's soul; the sheer amount of research, time, effort and trial and error it takes to make a finished product that is even half as functional as what was originally envisioned. It's why the vast majority of Arms are won in battle rather than crafted with care. What little Vergil knows of the process barely even covers how enhance existing weapons properly. As it stands, he's already itching to cross-reference her notes. Vergil has met some demon smiths who would find themselves unwillingly impressed if they knew who this came from.

He just getting absorbed into the intricacy of the design when Nicoletta speaks up again, this time far more thoughtful and conversational.

"It's sweet, what you're doing for them," she says, eyes forward and pensive. The cigarette she takes a drag from is longer compared to the last one he saw. "I'm almost jealous, actually. My asshole daddy didn't leave me or my momma nothing but some lies and a broken heart before he died, and yet here _you_ are. I'm not sure anyone expected you to come back and actually give Nero a chance to know you. Not after you been gone for so long. I mean, I heard you were _dead_ for some of that time - weird, by the way - but still."

"Are you going to exonerate me as well?" Vergil eyes her warily.

The side-eye she gives him is both flat and faintly mocking. "Pffft. Who said anything about that? I'm just leaving the retribution to Nero if he wants it. I mean, you _did_ fuck him up and then turn around to turn an entire city into plant food, duh."

Her body language then wilts slightly as her expression clouds with troubled contemplation. "Having said that... I heard from the survivors. About this skinny goth twink who tried to help evacuation teams, even staying behind in the ruins to buy people time to get out. They would all say that he probably got himself turned into paste or eaten or something. If you or V or whoever hadn't had the talking chicken and pussy cat, that's probably what would have happened."

Nicoletta pauses to take another drag, only to find her current cigarette burned to the filter. She tosses the butt into the ashtray on the table, pulls out another and stares at it as if she's contemplating whether or not her addiction has been satisfied yet. "I can't deny that you did some really bad shit - I mean, there's an entire city gone to prove it, _duh_. But... I don't know, man," she sighs, something frustrated turning the sound rough and aggressive. Her free hand reaches up to scratch her head and the cigarette in the other is stored away again. "I didn't have much stake in the whole thing beyond getting my works tested and keeping Nero from getting himself killed when I could. I didn't know you. I didn't know any of those people. Hell, I only saw the survivors long after it was over. It's hard to feel much for people you've never even seen the face of, even if you never would have wished this fate on 'em, you know? The only think I can say actually got to me was finding out that you, the guy who made that mess to begin with, were using us the whole time. Maybe that makes me a shitty person. Fuck if I know."

"No," Vergil counters quietly. Soberly. Memories of a quiet, bitter, dying young man, selfish in his penitence and desperate in his survival, drift past his eyes. "It just makes you human."

Nicoletta looks to him, something passing unsure and tentative in her eyes, before she shakes her head and the moment fades like mist in the summer sun. "Yeah, guess so. So, you gonna lend me that brain of yours or not?"

Vergil sighs wearily.

* * *

There are times when Dante is actually glad to see Lady step through his door, even with Trish in tow. Late on a Saturday night, while he's trying his hardest to kill his brain cells and his liver after having woken up to one of the worst hangovers he's had to deal with in years, is not one of them.

Yeah, turns out that demonic constitutions can't do jackshit about dehydration on its own. Dante found that out the hard way after the fire.

Lady glares at him from across the table, arms crossed over her chest with a look that says she's about ready to start punching holes in his skull again if he doesn't stop doing whatever is pissing her off. He hates when she does that normally, but he especially hates it while he's hungover. He's never gotten a migraine, but he's always imagined that the experiences are similar.

It's silent for the moment. Small mercies. Lady scans the office, taking the place in. Dante can see her mismatched eyes catch on the bottles of booze that he hasn't bothered to clean up. Her finger then swipes through the dust on his desk, leaving a visible line behind. Tired of the stifling silence, Dante opens his mouth to ask her what she's doing here. Instead, he can only yelp as Lady reaches over the desk and hauls him forward with a hand fisting his tattered shirt. She pushes herself closer and instantly the faded scar on her nose contorts against the smell of days-old demon ichor, sweat, booze and blood. The effort it takes to restrain the tide of red that wants to rise up, that wants to rip and tear and make bleed whatever dares touch him while he's feeling low and fragile, within him leaves him faintly breathless. Across the room, Trish tenses and watches him sharply as Lady lets him go.

"Where is he?" It's probably not the tone she wants to use, but then Lady tends to be a little softer on the rare occasions she finds him like this.

Playing stupid is his go-to when there's a conversation he doesn't want to have lingering in their air, but in this case it will only make them linger. Dante would rather not entertain guests while he's trying to fight himself. "Gone. Off to Fortuna to visit the kid."

In a terrifying instant, Lady's face goes blank. It automatically sets his hackles to raising, defensive. The added stress causes something tenuous to start tipping, mirror-like pond picking up speed until it resembles roiling ocean currents, and Dante has to shut his instincts down hard in his unfit state. A closed-off Lady is never one he likes dealing with. Not when she has fashioned herself into as much a predator as any demon, yet still remains so quintessentially human.

"Did he say why?" Lady asks after a beat, glancing away for the second needed to make eye contact with Trish.

Dante shrugs and decides to reach for the nearest unopened bottle of his old man's wine. The question rips open what little scabbing had managed to form over the gaping wound that he can't seem to stop poking at. "Dunno. Dumbass got it in his head that I apparently didn't like him being here."

With his throat going tight as a too small pair of underwear and dry as a salt flat, Dante's voice comes out far more roughly than the casual, bored tone he intended. It gives him away, and the way both of their eyes lock steady on him sends the part of him he never managed to distinguish between animal and demon snarling. He wants to get up from his chair and pace this awful energy out, but any further action from him is one more sign of weakness too many.

Trish cocks her head and does that weird slow blink at him that reminds him more of a reptile than anything. She seems to turn something over in her head. "That was about a month ago, right? Is he still with Nero?"

It's been a month already? A month and Dante hasn't gotten a single letter, phone call or even a postcard. Not like he got one back when they were teenagers, either, and it's not like he was expecting one. At least this time it's definitely his fault. He flicks the cap off and takes a swig. It's nowhere near as strong as he would like; the burn a gentle smolder compared to the blazing inferno of the Everclear that turns his mind to white static before the buzz has a chance to hit his bloodstream. Disappointing, to say the least. Ungentlemanly as it is to think it, he can't wait until the ladies leave. Dante would like to be able to work up to the proper amount of shit-faced he needs to be to get to sleep sometime tonight.

 

~~_(To think that he would spend all that time trying to avoid sleep, and yet now all he finds himself doing throughout the day is counting the seconds until the hours in which he is not awake to see them pass by.)_ ~~

 

"Last I checked," Dante replies, just as roughly as before. He takes another swig from the bottle, only to have it snatched out of his hand by an irate Lady. His jaw forms a needle-teeth snarl before he can stop himself. It takes far too much effort to force his mouth back into proper human shape. The demonic energy inside him continues to seethe wildly. Lady and Trish need to leave _now_.

Lady meets him just as fiercely, far too used to him at his worst to be driven off by a show of fangs and restrained anger. Dante normally loves that about her - finds that temper and chutzpah a perfect match to his own baying blood-thirst and craving for the chaotic flow of battle. It and their unique understandings of each other are what make her, him and Trish all such good hunting partners. Right now, though, he has to dig his nails into his palms to keep from ripping her throat out with his bare hands for her audacity. As if sensing how volatile his mood is, Trish comes up right behind Lady. The shift in the ozone tinge of her scent isn't quite fear, but it does tell him that she's ready to bolt the second he makes a wrong move. Good.

"You left the guy who summoned Temen-ni-gru _and_ planted the Qliphoth to his own devices _for a month_ , with only Nero there to act as a first response in case he tries something," Lady says, and it's not a question. Calm as her face and tone are, they can't disguise the fury that sets her ablaze. "He could be doing anything right now, and we wouldn't know. How can we be sure he isn't doing something stupid and apocalyptic for a _third_ time?"

You think I haven't considered that? Dante mentally grumbles at her, starting to get a bit aggravated and feeling a headache coming on. It's all I could think about for the first week after we came back. "Vergil said he wasn't interested in going back to the demon world."

"That's reassuring," Lady snarks back, putting the bottle back down, "and doesn't cover everything. He's lied to us before, remember? As V?"

"Vergil is a shit liar," Dante retorts, a little insulted and entirely too sober for this. His heart is starting to beat faster, and that makes the growing headache behind his eyes worse. "He can omit information like no one's business, but he's never been able to straight lie to someone's face and not immediately give the game away. Especially not back when we were kids. He's just gone to Nero's so he can have a roof over his head while he finds a new place to stay."

"I don't know why you're content not to go after him," Lady says harshly, mouth twisting into an exasperated scowl. Dante feels everything go still and quiet for a moment, blank shock replacing the turbulent blend of vexation, bitter grief and demonic energy inside him before it all surges back twice as bad, slamming into him with the force of a tsumani. There's a static roar in his brain that's hard to think through. All he can do is sit and listen. "I don't know why you're here drinking yourself to death over him _again_ when you know where he is and what he's capable of. I know you." A traitorous part of Dante's mind whispers a hushed doubt before fading into the ether once more. "I know you spent every day since I met you thinking about him. He's used us, used _you_ , and left you to clean up his messes multiple times, remember? So forgive me if, for the love of God, I can't figure out why you're still _here_."

She continues speaking, everything about her body language saying concern and anger in equal parts, but by now he's too distracted to hear to another word. The red tide buzzes like ionized plasma beneath his human flesh, stirred ever closer to the surface by a mixture of dark rage and darker, deeper grief. It is with a jolt of terror that he realizes that he's so close to triggering he can almost taste it. So close to the flood of fire and power that would scorch away every aspect of his humanity if it meant destroying that which caused him pain. Desperately, Dante screams. "LADY!"

Lady stops mid-breath, confused and irritated, but then something like realization passes over her face, causing her eyes to widen and body to visibly tense. All at once, every ounce of her vehement umbrage is replaced by meek, awkward guilt and wary caution. The bittersweet tinge of fear hits the air, and something predatory and waiting in the back of his mind _shrieks_. "Dante, I-"

Dante points to the door, his hand far more steady than his heavy breathing implies. "Get out."

Dante gives Lady a lot of liberties because of their long friendship, but there's only so much he will tolerate even on a good day - and Dante hasn't had a good day in weeks. Thankfully, perhaps realizing that she's gone too far this time, she doesn't even try to fight him. She nods without another word and then she and Trish leave quickly. Trish practically pushes her out the door, but Dante still manages to catch them sharing a meaningful glance. The door closes behind them with a quiet _click_ , and the sound of a car starting and driving away follows some time after. He's finally alone again.

Dante slumps forward, elbows on the desk, to put his head in his hands and focus on his breathing. His heart throbs beneath his ribs, the bruised and bleeding thing demanding his attention. His eyes ache even as they refuse to water. He can deal with his stupid emotions later - right now, he has to get his demonic energy-

It's so close to the surface... Red lightning crackles wildly both within and without now that he's alone, the sound something between a tesla coil and a wildfire. His skin feels tight, like it's trying to contain something far bigger than it was ever meant to house. Everything hurts and it's hard to breathe. All he needs now is the rain pounding down from on high, chilling him to the bone even through his coat, and he would be back on that damn tower with the Rebellion oh so lovingly driven right through his sternum. He can't-

 

~~_Of course, he remembers - he can't stop remembering. Just like he remembers that, as a kid, Vergil always came back for the things he thought were worth coming back for. The amulet, Force Edge, Nero, even a damn fruit, but never for his own twin brother._ _  
_ ~~

 

Red surges, ripping free of his grasping hands. His body throws itself headlong into a trigger without his consent, the transformation one long pulse of agony as his humanity, making a futile attempt to resist the oncoming wave, is forcefully burned away for the first time in decades. The screaming howl that tears itself from his throat isn't human in the slightest, echoed and warped like sound trapped in a cave, but it pales in comparison the deafening screech of cracking wood, rending metal and shattering glass as his power runs wild without his control there to stop it. He tries to grab on using the unnatural clarity his transformation grants him, far beyond what his human form is capable of attaining, but there's nothing to be done as the red sweeps him along in rapids that threaten to drown him completely.

By the time he resurfaces, the red is begrudging instead of feral as he wills it back inside its cage. The sundering pain stops only when he finally pulls scales and fangs and wings back beneath his human skin, the accoutrements flaking away like ashes that disintegrate into powder mid-air. Dante sucks in breath after heaving breath, face and body practically dripping with sweat, muscles trembling with exhaustion and the lingering aftershocks of the uneasy shift. There is no relief after his rampage, no release of pressure that suddenly makes the well of power within him easier to control - only satiation in the form of violence that soothes the sulfurous current into menthol passivity. Light-headed and terribly dizzy, Dante picks his head up to survey the damage.

The entire office is destroyed - every wall, the floor and the ceiling scoured deeply by gouges that look like they came from his sword, the brass banister torn and twisted off the barely intact stairwell, the bar area cracked in half and the jukebox dead and completely destroyed. His ceiling fan is on the ground, his couch is missing one side of its back to a long diagonal cut, stuffing coming out of several smaller tears, the bookshelf that Vergil set up is knocked over with the contents scattered across the floor, the bottles littering the room now little more than an ocean of broken glass and booze, and his plants, poor things starting to go brown from neglect, on the ground in a mess of dirt and shattered porcelain. Even his desk wasn't spared in his rampage - missing one of its corners entirely. How it's still standing is beyond him.

The only things spared from the destruction are the chair he's sitting on and his mother's picture, still pristine and lovely as ever in her frame, watching him.

Dante staggers to his feet and grabs a bottle of Everclear from the kitchen. He then collapses on the broken couch, drinking like a dying man in the desert until he mercifully passes out. The bottle falls from his hand and hits the floor, empty.

* * *

It is a deep ache behind his ribs that wakes him in the middle of the night, briefly suffocating in its intensity. Vergil claws at his chest, yet finds no wound. He searches around the loft, stretching out his senses to detect even the faintest traces of magic or demonic energy, yet only picks up on Nero and Nico's projects and Kyrie's burgeoning spellwork trilling in the back of his mind. The ache remains - he manages to muster the effort to breathe through it, but a quick check of himself makes it clear that the constant mid-level pain is not coming from anything physical.

Laying down again proves to be useless. Unease curls into a weight in his stomach, causing him to toss and turn as his skin starts to itch with nervous energy that urges him to get up, get going, _move_. By the time 10 minutes pass, Vergil gives up on sleep entirely and leaves the apartment. He instead finds himself sitting on the edge of one of the city's tallest spires. The night air is much colder compared to when Vergil arrived in Fortuna a month ago, the humidity conducting the night's chill and allowing it to penetrate through his coat. The wind at this height causes his coattails to flutter around his legs. The view is beautiful from here; the half-moon glinting brightly off the ocean's undulating mirror surface, the stars just managing to pierce the light pollution enough that the brightest constellations are visible overhead. It's a quiet spot in the midst of a fairly busy city. A perfect place to practice his meditations.

The aching discomfort has remained static this whole time, and as such it is easy enough to shunt to the side in favor of mastering himself. The Yamato laid across his lap, Vergil concentrates on his air. There is nothing to be done about the pain for now, so he sets it aside for later contemplation. With every breath, he forces the buzz under his skin to smooth and subside into calm focus, determined to follow the path towards its cause and conclusion. The destination does not surprise him.

This is far from the first time Vergil has ever experienced this kind of intuition, though admittedly this is one of the more intense occurrences. The only time he can think of that might have been worse than this was when-

The familiar signature of Nero's energy comes closer to him, disturbing his contemplations. Nero lands with surprisingly lightness on the shingles before carefully making his way closer, choosing to sit on the edge less than a foot away. Without looking, Vergil can sense the traces of demonic energy on his son's back.

"Nico says you're the one who messed with Red Queen," Nero begins, neutral and conversational. There is no anger scenting the air yet, nothing disturbing the odor of blood and engine grease, acrid fuel, the subtle cologne he wears for Kyrie and a robust smell that Vergil is only just now starting to recognize as a full home. "I read the note - something about a wind element being added to strengthen her? Can I uh... ask why you felt the need to do that? It's useful and all - I mean, earlier I hit a demon so hard it burned to cinders in one swing, but..."

"You've awakened to your true power," Vergil explains, exhaling and allowing his eyes to open. "I'm sure you've noticed that your abilities have taken a significant step up even outside of your other form. The Red Queen is well-made, no doubt, but she is also fashioned from simple steel - prone to dulling and, therefore, breakage. If she did not crack against some demon's hide, she would sooner or later shatter under the force you exert on her."

Vergil holds out his hand and Nero places the Red Queen's hilt in it. He runs delicate fingers over the blade's new obsidian, almost crystalline surface. The exhaust pipes have taken on an appearance of shuttered vents, angled just so to help propel a swing that little bit faster when her internal engine fires. The base now looks to be made of solid crystal, black and streaked with lines of blood and silver like veins, leading into the rotating grip, which is wrapped in a deep red leather. Her base shape has thankfully not changed much beyond some small, cerrated spines in the spine of the blade, so the balance remains unaffected. The edge is now a dull grey-ish white, sharp as volcanic glass, and was tempered with a demon's soul so as to not wear down over time. "There is a process by which one may infuse demonic essentia into an object, increasing its durability tremendously and sometimes even transferring upon it said demon's abilities. Like this, she will no longer require the fuel you used to supply her with to ignite her Exceed function - only your energy. It's clear that she is a beloved companion of yours by how you invest in her care... It would be a shame to lose her to something so preventable."

It is a fine sword - strong and beautiful; it will serve his son well in the years to come.

"You made her into a Devil Arm," Nero concludes, taking her back with a look a little like awe in his eyes. He holds the Red Queen aloft, and just then, the moonlight hits her at the right angle to fragment through her transparent surface and cast rays of color and light across his face and surroundings. The surprised gasp and the flash of delight that flits across his face makes the all the previous apprehension worth it. "That's what she is now, right?"

"Indeed," Vergil confirms, shifting in his seat when Nero turns to look at him with eyes far more open and grateful than he's used to. "If a fair bit less sentient than most organically-made Devil Arms. She may have a bit of temperament now."

The ache in his chest chooses now to subside, though it does leave his insides feeling tender and bruised. Vergil would describe the sensation as someone having tried to shove a blunted dagger through him from the inside out and only succeeded in punching through everything _else_. The nervous buzz trying to persuade his muscles into action is also calming, going from the mental scream of haywire instincts to the vague suggestion that one should not be here. He keeps the Yamato in his lap, just so that he can run his hand over her familiar sheath.

Nero lowers the Red Queen and begins to tap his fingers on her flat, the rhythmic noise made staccato by obvious nerves. Vergil waits, and eventually his patience is rewarded when the boy looks up at him again.

"There's something I've always wanted to ask you," Nero leads with. His left hand clenches seemingly reflexively, and Vergil thinks he knows where this is headed.

"Did you...," Nero pauses to lick his lips. "Did you know my mother? As a person, I mean? What she was like?"

Vergil's brow furrows in confusion as yet another piece of the puzzle appears on the board. "You weren't raised by her?"

"No," his son replies, and that just causes frustration to bubble. Why wouldn't she have raised her own son when...? "The Order of the Sword found me as a baby during the last witch hunt and sent me to the nearest orphanage. It's where I met Kyrie and Credo."

At last, the final piece appears. With it, the puzzle Vergil has been trying to solve for close to 2 months is assembled, bringing clarity, and a strange, very distant sort of mourning. "When I was younger, much younger than you even, I traveled to Fortuna to search for any information related to my father. While I was here, I also looked into the possibility of contacting any remaining witch covens."

Nero watches him intently with a desperate sort of hunger, starved for the knowledge that has been denied to him. At the mention of covens, however, his head tilts in confusion. "My mother was herself a witch, you see. Before she died, she had taught your uncle and I how to channel our innate energies into magic. I had always been interested in it, but since the demon attack that took her life and separated us, I had been... voracious in my pursuit of any sort of power I could get my hands on. Without power, you can't protect anything, let alone yourself."

A startled gasp cuts him off. Vergil refocuses his attention, only for Nero to disguise something shaken and perturbed with an impatient wave of his hand. "So, what? What are you saying? My mother is a witch?"

"The clan I established contact with had one rule when it came to outsiders - anything you take from them must be traded for something of equal or greater value. I had very little that they could have wanted at the time, but a gift they would never turn down was a child to grow their numbers. That they were not cruel enough to outright deny the other parent a chance to visit their child, only demanding that their first 12 years belong solely to the coven, was a positive. I learned from them, and then I chose the woman whom I would bed." Nostalgia sweeps through him, bringing with it memories that Vergil had almost forgotten about. "Your mother and I did not know each other well. We saw each other on occasion, but she was almost a full decade older than I was. I find I can't recall her name - only that I chose her... because she seemed to love the color red. I had left Fortuna well before you were born. If you were found as a result of a witch hunt and raised in an orphanage, however, then she and her coven are dead."

Nero's face falls, brow pinched and shoulders slumped forward. He sighs deeply and his eyes clench shut for a long moment. Something in Vergil tightens in sympathy.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, not knowing quiet what he's apologizing for - leaving and not being there, or not being able to give more.

Nero only shakes his head in response. "You didn't know. But... why didn't you come back? If you knew you only had to stay away for 12 years, then why...?"

"The simple answer is that I was dead by then," Vergil replies, perhaps a bit coldly. This still raw part of his history is not something he enjoys speaking about. Still, because he does owe his son more than a book of poems and a fulfilled promise to return disguised as a challenge, he lets out a breath and continues on. "The more complicated answer is... I _had_ planned to be done with my business by then. Hindsight being what it is, I see now that I took some very foolish risks, only to quickly discover that I could not control every outcome when all of my plans went awry. In my obsessive quest for more power, the power of Sparda himself, I was the one to cast the first stone of the feud between my brother and I. A decision that came back to haunt me in a way I could not compensate for. 9 years later, he killed me. I want to say you would have been 9 and a half at most."

"You say that, but what did you need all that power _for_ , anyway?" Nero asks him, practically pleading with Vergil to help him understand. As V, he had been certain Nero would not be able to understand. Even now, he is still not completely convinced. "What was worth starting _that_ with your own family? You - V said that you both thought you _had_ to fight, but I still don't understand why."

"Justice," Vergil says, gazing out over distant waters, mouth drawn into a thin line. "Or perhaps vengeance. The line is so easily blurred, after all. I mentioned before that my mother was killed in a demon attack. It was the one that hit Red Grave decades before I split myself in two and my demon half planted the Qliphoth; caused by the greatest of my father's enemies. I thought I lost everything in that attack and the fire it caused. As the eldest son, I had a duty to see that the family was avenged. By the time I learned your uncle was still alive, I was consumed by it. Not cost was too great, especially if it meant he was safe."

"You keep avoiding his name," Nero accuses without true heat. "You haven't said it once since you came here."

The hand Nero touches to his shoulder only has contact for a fraction of a second before Vergil's skin starts to crawl. He knocks it away, hard, causing Nero to retreat with a pained hiss.

"What the hell, man!" Nero shouts, nursing his injured hand. "What is it with you and people touching you? If you've got a problem, just say something!"

"My problem," Vergil spits with a venom that is aimed both within and without, shoulders hiked up around his ears before he can stop them yet unable to lower them without looking like he has to make an effort not to, "is that the most dire consequence of my foolish risks was being so severely weakened by my confrontation with my brother that I _lost_ to my mother's murderer. That demon then decided that I would make the perfect puppet, embroiling me in horrific experiments and dark magic so foul that I had to die, revive and then physically cut the memories of both during and after away just to return to something approaching actual _sanity_. One of the side effects of this, _apparently_ , is being unable to tolerate any sort of physical touch. _Forgive me_ if I don't appreciate it overmuch."

The air is silent as Nero visibly processes the information, eyes wide and distressed. His mouth twists uncertainly, but the sympathy Vergil can see on his face might as well be pity for how much it is welcome. When he speaks, it is much more calm and understanding. "Is there anyone who _doesn't_ cause that sort of reaction? Or is it an everyone no matter what kind of thing?"

"... My brother."

"Your brother," Nero repeats slowly, lips turning down. "Who you're not here with. Who you moved away from a month ago for reasons you still haven't told anyone."

He doesn't know why he does it, but Vergil finds himself explaining everything.

Nero listens to it all, every odd behavior, every withdrawal, every word exchanged, and when there's nothing else to say, he sits back with the most peculiar look of confusion on his face. Not quite disbelief, but certainly suspicion. "That... doesn't make any sense. Are you _sure_ that's how he actually feels?"

Vergil scowls back, defensive. "What other conclusion could I have drawn? It's not like there were many indications to the contrary."

"But he was happy you were back," Nero rebuts like it's the most obvious thing in the world, and something wounded and broken inside Vergil snarls with automatic denial.

Best to nip this misconception in the bud if he still can. "Truly? 24 years of blood-soaked history say otherwise."

Instead of ending the conversation as Vergil had hoped, the words only seem to incite Nero to bounce around in his perch until he is facing Vergil head on. There is a look of stubborn insistence on his face, so sure of his answer and immediately Vergil knows that his son will not be easily dissuaded. Not when he can see Eva's bright, headstrong fire in her grandson's eyes. "No, you don't get it," Nero denies again, causing Vergil to scoff. "He was _happy_ when he didn't have to fight you anymore. He jumped off the Qliphoth with you, _before_ you. Dante doesn't do shit if he doesn't want to do it, and he certainly doesn't do anything extra if it doesn't involve Lady, Trish or me. I didn't realize it because I only met him when I was 19, but Dante always seemed like he was..."

Nero bites his lip as he searches for the right words. When he finds them, his tone is softer, if no less insistent. "It always seemed like he was trying not to let the world touch him. Like he was so withdrawn from everything, there was nothing stopping him from just vanishing on a whim. But, then you come back as both V and Urizen, as yourself, and all of a sudden it's like he's an actual living, breathing person. Like I said, I hadn't noticed it before, but the second you both walked into the apartment smelling like sweat and dried demon shit..." Their eyes lock as his son seems to will Vergil into understanding what he's trying to convey. "I suddenly realized that I've never actually seen him _happy_ before. That was true every time I've seen you together since then, too. If that's not the case anymore, then maybe something else be going on? I mean, he calls me every week asking about how you're doing."

Once more, a snarl of dissent comes from deep within. It's on the tip of Vergil's tongue to insist that Nero is wrong, that the boy is only seeing what he wants to see in his endeavor to have the family he never got chance to be with before. It's easy to believe. Nero was the one who stopped their feud, who welcomed Vergil into his home just because he asked, who even now approaches him with tentative longing for a father long-absent. Why shouldn't he want to believe these things, that the two brothers really have reconciled?

It's on the tip of his tongue to deny it, and yet something still so disgracefully, nauseatingly hopeful and wanting prevents him from saying so. What if? It whispers in a voice so soft and dark, making it difficult to speak. You never bothered to find out what your brother really meant. You ran before he could explain. You were scared to find out.

It's obvious what he meant, Vergil thinks, trying to shut it down. But...

... Was it?

The Yamato's sheath is hard and unyielding under his tightening fingers, always tolerating the punishment he puts her through as he sorts his thoughts. Was it really so obvious? Vergil had assumed, given how their previous animosity towards each other, given his brother's own words about stopping Vergil even if it meant killing him atop Temen-ni-gru, and then his hasty attack after Vergil had just reformed, that any tolerance his brother had shown was begrudging at best. That he was being monitored for further misdeeds that would not come.

Had he been scared to find out if the renewal of their bond was just his imagination? Much as he doesn't want to examine the thought, Vergil can't deny that it has... some truth to it.

"Have you told Dante what you told me?" Nero asks, arms crossed lightly. "About the whole avenging grandma and protecting him reason _behind_ your original quest for power?"

"I have not, though I believe he suspects the former reason to be true."

The look that earns Vergil is confused, astonished and perhaps just the slightest bit frustrated. "Have you at least told him what V told me? That you came back from the dead and stayed alive so that you could see and fight him again?"

Hesitantly, feeling like he's being scolded, Vergil eyes his son back. "... I have not."

Slowly, Nero's confusion fades and is replaced by the precursors to anger, temper visibly starting to spark. Vergil watches him warily, anticipating a strike. "You're telling me," he says, sounding like he's having difficultly keeping his jaw relaxed, "that the only thing you and him have done since you came back to the human world was live in the same house, spar, and _not_ talk about anything important like, say, _what happened between you two_?"

Vergil chooses to remain silent, but that, too, is an answer of sorts.

Nero throws his hands up, letting out a loud noise that doesn't know whether it is a groan or an scream, yet somehow manages to be both. "There's half your problem right there! You let your swords talk for you!"

Since silence has worked for him so far, Vergil continues keeping his mouth shut.

"If I knew I came from a family of idiots, I wouldn't have kept my hopes up. For fuck's sake," Nero grumbles through gritted teeth, the fuse on his temper long gone.

"An idiot, am I?" Insulted, Vergil draws up the energy to summon a few of his spectral swords and teach his little upstart of a brat what it means to have respect. Nero chooses then as a good time to lean into his space.

"Yes, you are," Nero declares, scowling. He must notice the several diaphanous blue swords hanging in the air above him in warning, and yet he chooses to ignore them. Foolish boy. "So is he, but he's not here right now. How do you know what he's thinking when you don't talk? The two of you haven't had a meaningful conversation in 35 fucking years, and you're sitting here telling me you understand what he's thinking. You're assuming that he understands what _you_ are thinking. Did it ever once occur to you that all he might ever have wanted was _you_?"

Apparently fed up, Nero throws himself back onto his hands with an aggravated growl, face scrunched into a scowl with eyes closed and brow furrowed tightly, mumbling to himself under his breath. The gesture is rude, unquestioningly so. Vergil grits his teeth and primes his swords to pierce down, only to pause when Nero takes in and releases a deep, hissing breath. He doesn't open his eyes again until all tension is gone from his shoulders.

"Just... hear me out before you start skewering me, okay?" He asks, expression serious.

Vergil allows it, graciously. He watches as Nero then stares up at the sky with a look of somber contemplation, still ignoring the swords suspended above him. "A while back, Kyrie and I got into a series of really bad fights. She was upset that I just ran off with V - you -  _V_ to Red Grave without telling her. I can't say I really helped anything either, since I was so focused on getting revenge for my arm and being mad over Dante calling me a dead weight. She didn't want me to go back there - she was always so worried that I was going to get hurt again, and, not gonna lie, in the place I was in back then, I didn't take that too well. It made me feel like she doubted me. We fought so often that, for a while, it almost seemed like it was gonna be the end of us."

Nero's hands clench, and he leans forward so that his elbows rest on his knees. He turns his gaze from the stars to look down at his reflection on the Red Queen's surface, frowning deeply. "What I didn't realize at the time was that she was just as hurt and scared by you attacking me as I was. She wasn't doubting me, she just... was scared to lose me. But she also knew she couldn't actually stop me from going anyway. Towards the end of the month-long time limit Nico gave me, Kyrie and I agreed that when I got back, she and I were going to sit down and have a serious talk. About everything - the Order, Credo, the kids, my arm, us. It didn't matter how long the talk would take, or if we had to stop and take breaks over multiple days. We were just gonna talk, and try not to fight. Thinking back, that decision is probably what saved us."

Vergil cocks his head and reluctantly lets his summoned swords fade away. "Is that so?"

"Yeah," Nero replies, a hint of relieved laughter in his voice. The look in his eyes is bright and easy. "Would you believe me if I said that, after our talk, we're closer than ever now? I didn't think it was possible but... It's what we needed."

"I'm glad," Vergil replies, and is only mildly surprised to find that he means it. Being here, in Fortuna, in his son's home, has been... eye-opening in terms of rediscovering himself, to say the least.

Slowly, Vergil breathes, and sets his anger aside. The lesson behind the tale is obvious and has merit, even if he's still not completely sure how well it should work in practice. After all, how does one even begin to speak about a past that has refused to die? "... When did you get to be so wise?" Vergil asks in lieu of saying anything else.

Nero scoffs. His hand comes up to scratch his nose, coincidentally hiding the small flush of pink that darkens his cheeks. "I don't know about that. Still, maybe that's what you both need, too. To just put the swords down for once and actually talk to each other."

"Perhaps," Vergil acquiesces, and breathes out a heavy sigh. Perhaps an attempt is long overdue.

"All you can do is try," Nero says, shrugging. His mouth quirks up into a faint grin. "Though, I'd say sooner rather than later."

"Is that so, hmmm?"

Nero laughs. "Yep! Who knows? Maybe Nico and I will help you get packed and send you on your way. You've had a month already."

Seemingly without notice, Nero once again lifts a hand to lay on Vergil's shoulder. He stops short, however, contrition clouding his eyes as he quickly pulls it back out of Vergil's space. He silently apologizes with a quirk of the lips and turns his head to peer out over the harbor in the distance.

Slowly, hesitantly, Vergil lays a hand on Nero's knee. It is unpleasant, borderline intolerable, but the gesture does not make his skin crawl as the earlier touch had. Startled, Nero's head jerks around to look at him, then down at the hand resting tense and clammy on his sweatpants. When he looks back up, his eyes glitter like stars.

"I've told you what I can about your mother, but I don't believe I've told you anything about your grandparents since I came here," Vergil offers, taking his hand back when he can stand the contact no longer.

"You haven't," Nero agrees cheekily, and his smile is brilliant. "How about this? You tell me about you, Dante and my grandparents and I'll tell you about all the shit me, Kyrie and Credo got up to back in the day. Sound fair?"

Time passes without notice as they watch the sea together and pass around stories of their childhoods. By the time they come up for air, it's late enough that they agree to head back to the apartment. They're just getting up and stretching their legs when Nero suddenly makes a choked noise and begins coughing. Vergil looks over in askance, brow furrowed in concern, only for Nero to wave him off.

"Nothing, nothing!" Nero denies unconvincingly. "Just, ah... You said you chose my mother because she loved the color _red_ , right? As in, the color _Dante_ wears...?"

Never mind that red was Eva's color before it was ever his twin's, but Vergil can immediately see where this is going. He sighs tiredly. And they were having such a nice evening, too. "You're not going to start spouting off moral platitudes about incest, are you?"

Nero chokes and turns red as a sunrise. "You're just-! Ah, no, no. I uh... Just glad to finally know that it actually does run in the family."

Vergil raises an eyebrow at that. Nero clears his throat, embarrassed.

"Kyrie has practically been my sister most of my life, remember? If I got on your ass about this, I'd be huge hypocrite," he mutters. "Whatever. I don't want to talk about this."

Lips quirking in a small smirk, Vergil can't help but add, "It's a demon thing. In my and your uncle's case, it is specifically a cambion _twin_ thing."

_"I don't want to talk about this!"_

Good night or no, he still hasn't forgotten his son's lack of respect earlier. Vergil pins Nero to the roof with several summoned swords before heading back to the apartment alone, leaving the young man shouting behind him.

As he expects, Vergil returns to the apartment first. The lights are all off, just as they had been when he left, but when he turns down the corridor to the loft, he finds the bathroom light turned on. He's just about to go past as quickly and quietly as he can when the door opens more fully. Light illuminates the hall, and out of the room steps a sleepy, tired Kyle holding a glass of water.

The child looks at him and almost double takes, eying him curiously. Vergil eyes him back. When the staring goes on for too long, he moves to usher the child back to bed.

"You know what to do now," Kyle says with complete certainty, nodding and smiling a happy, sleepy grin. Vergil freezes, uncertain and more disturbed than he is willing to admit. "Good. It made me sad that you always seemed so lost. Good night, grandpa Vergil!"

"... Good night, Kyle," Vergil replies, and watches as the child disappear into his room at the other end of the hall. He makes sure to turn the light off in the bathroom before he heads up the steep ladder to the loft, already determined to put the encounter out of his mind.

 

_~~Vergil only notices it later, when he's laying down to try and salvage some sleep from the night, but the world seems like it is not so off-kilter anymore. It is a sensation he had started to forget existed. A new chain, several in fact, have formed inside him. The thin links are still molten and soft, but they are mostly formed from bases that Vergil recognizes as having once been fashioned by V, and already he can feel them start to pull him back.~~ _

 

* * *

Late the next morning, Vergil is rudely awoken by the sound of the loft hatch slamming hard against the floor.

As if summoned by some hellish, unholy ritual, one designed to conjure what only the foolish and the desperate contact, Nicoletta rises up from the hole with a bellowing call. "Riiiiise and shine, V! Up and at 'em - you don't want to be late, do you?"

Vergil groans and tries in vain to pull his coat over his head, only for it to be snatched away. "Late to what!? What are you squawking about?" He growls.

Nero follows her out of the hole, bearing a grin of mischief so dire that even demon lords would tremble before him. "Why, moving day, of course! You said something about needing to go see _Uncle Dante_ last night, remember?"

 _Of course_. Vergil should have seen this coming from the man who is _his_ son. He will not make the same mistake again. "You little-"

"No time!" Nicoletta crows, and together the pair make short work of packing all of Vergil's materials away neatly and precisely. Twice, Nicoletta goes to tug him around, only to be caught and stopped inches short of making contact by one of Nero's wings. Hurriedly tying the Yamato to his belt, Vergil does what he can short of damaging the apartment to intercept them, but with the two of them working like a well-oiled machine there is little he can do. Seemingly within no time at all, they're spiriting Vergil's luggage down the ladder and into the main residence. They're fast despite only one of them being human, and the tight confines of the apartment make trying to get ahead of them difficult. The one time he tries teleporting ahead of them, Nero just pins him to the ceiling with a clawed wing so that they may pass below.

Slightly out of breath and mad enough to grind his teeth, Vergil corners them in the open garage, where Kyrie and the children are also waiting.

Kyrie hands him a paper bag that smells heavily of fresh bread and cured meats. "For the trip," she chirps brightly, now far less reserved since he began teaching her magic. Vergil takes the bag automatically, opening it to see a still-steaming panino con porchetta packed right along side a ciambelle and some napkins to keep his hands clean. Her task complete, Kyrie goes to join Nero, Nicoletta and the children near the worktables, wrapping an arm around his waist and he tucks her into his side.

"We'll miss you, grandpa!" Julio says, body swaying from the force of waving his arms.

"You better come back and visit some time!" Carlo demands. Nicoletta gives her agreement from between her snickering, though her tone in decidedly more teasing.

"It'll work out," Kyle assures with all the simple confidence of a child from his place holding Nero's other hand. "You'll see."

They paint a strange picture, standing their and watching him as if he means something to them and their lives. Like they would remember if he were gone for long and would be happy to see him return. The thought is almost incomprehensible after a life spent an anchorless wanderer, beholden to no one and nothing but himself and his duty as Sparda's son. But... even so... It occurs to Vergil that...

They're here to see him off.

This time, when his chest tightens and throbs, it has nothing to do with his brother.

Nero grins at him with an expression of open fondness. "Don't come back until you've talked with Dante, you hear?"

It's dreadfully sentimental of him, he can't stop the helpless smile that splits his lips. "That might be sooner than you think," Vergil warns.

Nero shrugs easily. "However it goes, at least you tried."

* * *

 

**Y o u  D i d  T h i s**

 

_I'm coming home... Dante._

 

* * *

Of course, that's when fate decides that now is a good time for all hell to break loose. Outside the garage, a familiar car Vergil recognizes as belonging to his brother pulls up to sit level with him. The window rolls down, revealing the dark-shadowed faces of Mary and Trish. They take one look at him, point several guns in his direction out the window, causing Nero to cry out in alarm, and open fire.


	4. ... A New Future is Born...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand here's where we get started on actually healing both of our beloved Sons of Sparda, finally setting the stage for the closing act. It's 15K of a doozy, rife with my need to make in-game things make logical sense (and therefore full of perhaps unnecessary exposition and world-building XD) and I need to preface this with a warning of **brief discussion of suicidal ideation** , but nonetheless! Hope everyone has fun!

Despite having taken a heavy blow to the jaw, spectral blue wings imparting an impact force strong enough to crack demonic bone, Trish still manages to sound aggravatingly upbeat while spitting a final, tiny mouthful of blood out the car window. "Well, I'd say that went well."

In the front seat, Mary says nothing in favor of pressing a chemical ice pack to a purpling bruise on her stomach, sucking lightly at the split in her lip. She hasn't said so much as a word since ordering Vergil to get into the back seat with her partner in crime. Her other hand grips the steering wheel with a strength that leaves her knuckles white despite the obvious lack of need to steer for the moment.

Vergil glances out the window, already bored of the silent tension that hums louder than a storm siren's wail. The seat beneath him rocks gently on the waves as the noontime ferry takes then across the strait that cuts Fortuna off from the mainland. Salt hangs heavy in the air, far more so than it does in the middle of the city where his son's family resides. In his younger years, Vergil would often find himself doing everything he could to get away from the scent that irritated his nose to the point of sneezing. He often refused to go anywhere near the docks, lest he be seen making an ill-mannered fool of himself. He wonders when he stopped considering the ocean breeze as something to avoid.

His luggage forms a protruding lump in his pocket, unusually heavy due to the rushed nature of the spell used to turn them into a manageable size. Nero's retaliation against his all-too-willing companions unprovoked assault gave him just enough time to shrink them down before Mary shouldered her way past to grit her teeth in Vergil's face.

As entertaining as this little road stop is, Vergil has somewhere to be. His brother... _Dante_ is waiting for him, and if the suffering pull of his soul last night is any indication, than Vergil would be better served getting there sooner rather than later. Perhaps a good departure point would when they reach the docks, or just outside the town boundaries? The women have assured him that they're taking him straight to Devil May Cry, and the route to get there by car would pass right through the town of Laire. Perhaps he might put his original suspicions about the town to the test and leave them there.

"Don't even think about it, Vergil," Trish warns beside him, smile cheerful and beautiful. Each tooth is a blade already half-unsheathed. "Lady and I didn't come all this way just to give you a lift, you know. The three of us? We need to have a little _chat_."

"I have nothing to say to you," Vergil says, arms locked firmly over his chest.

Trish gives a short, quite scoff, flipping her long hair over her bare shoulder. She moves to get more comfortable in her seat, positioning herself to endure a long haul. "I suppose that will do for _now_. We can carry the conversation, if we have to. Though, you might want to speak up sooner or later. To give some _clarification_ , maybe?"

"I fail to see the reason why," Vergil counters, eyes narrowed into a flat glare. "In fact, I fail to see why you felt the need to drive all the way out here, with my brother's car, in order to, as you said, "give me a lift"."

The faux leather of the steering wheel creaks as Mary's fingers tighten further.

"Your brother is being a fucking idiot," she says, short, clipped and to the point.

Well, that, if nothing else, gives him a motive. Dante frequently delights in acting the fool, but if his two closest associates felt it was better to look for Vergil than remain with his brother then that is all the more credence that his intuition is correct. It explains how they had his location, too, since apparently Dante has been checking up on him behind his back.

Even after having some time to sleep on it, Vergil still isn't sure how he should feel able that little revelation. Not when he's torn between warm relief that Dante still cared enough to wonder after him, seething ire that his brother would rather skulk around through proxies rather than speak to Vergil directly, and suspicion as to the motivation behind Dante asking in the first place.

Was Dante really checking on his displaced older brother? Or was he using his unwitting nephew to get status reports? As much as Vergil's gut tells him that his twin isn't so callus, always far too caring and heartfelt and human, he cannot deny that Dante has become a clever actor over the years.

That, and Dante made his stance on Vergil’s activities apparent a long time ago.

Vergil huffs. Mary's shoulders tense ever so slightly when Vergil turns his stare on the back of her head. "And that is unusual, how?"

"Because he's being an idiot over _you_ ," Trish replies for her, turning an over-head stretch into an excuse to sprawl. One long leg props itself up in the narrow divide between seats, on the front passenger seat's armrest. This positions it rather conveniently to allow the toe of her boot to rest against her partner's arm. Like this, it is hard not to catch a fleeting, potent whiff of a demon's claim. The irrational resentment it inspires is quickly stamped down in favor of wary intrigue. Given the preoccupation of sorts he and his brother have always had with each other, it's not surprising to hear that Dante has been spurred into action because of Vergil.

She continues, bringing her nails up to her face for examination. The motion is a distinctly human one, but there is a slight lack of fluidity to it that gives away just how unnatural the urge really is to her. A performer conducting the gestures that would be expected of her guise rather than true, honest impulses. "You see, whenever you and Dante have any sort of _falling out_ that leaves him alone for a period of time, he tends to get into this absolutely inconsolable mood that makes him a pain in the ass to deal with. The big lug just refuses to get anything done and instead spends all his time wallowing in misery. So, to get things back on track, we've come to get you."

As children, his brother always had the tendency to become morose and withdrawn whenever Vergil went off on his own for too long, always jealously guarding the time he allowed Dante to have. When that proved to be too short for his liking, he needled and teased and pestered until he would be given more, never paying mind to the things Vergil himself sacrificed to grant Dante those extra few minutes. Learning about and growing closer to their devil's heritage helped contextualize the behavior, turning it from the whining of an attention-starved child to the cries of a bored, challenge-starved young demon surrounded by uninteresting prey.

Even so, throughout most of his life, that irreverence had been one of the things Vergil had resented most about his brother. So much so that he had escaped the house just for some quiet time to himself on that fateful night.

(That had also been something Vergil had once resented about Dante - that his twin, so soft and cheerful and woefully human, had acted with subconscious instinct closer to their father's heritage than Vergil ever had. Such feelings were quickly subsumed beneath the power that mastery over himself granted, however, and Vergil has paid little heed it to since.)

Somethings really do never change, Vergil muses, exasperated, relieved, and just the slightest bit fond. When he says as much aloud, however, the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood intensifies. Trish taps her boot against Mary's arm once more, but it seems to do nothing to soothe her.

A blue eye regards Vergil in a narrow side-eye. The look is shuttered, but it does nothing to disguise the displeasure that warps her grin into something meaningless and vaguely mocking. "Since you're not putting up a fight, I take it that you don't have a problem with going back to Devil May Cry?"

"As it turns out, I was on my way there," Vergil replies, to her visible surprise. He makes sure to give her a slow blink before turning his attention away. Petty it may be of him in this context, using a gesture among demons meant to indicate a lack of fear, especially when doing so after an attack implies disrespect, but after being bombarded with a short barrage of ballistics for not foreseeable reason, Vergil feels he is owed a little pettiness.

Static briefly fills the air with an inaudible hum, but Trish reigns it back in favor of an insincerely sweet smile.

"Well, Dante will be happy to see you again, at least. The shop's been awfully quiet since you left," she says, lacing her delicate, sparking fingers over her chest, moving with spiteful deliberation and leaving her vulnerable stomach wide open. Vergil’s teeth start to itch.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" The impatient venom in Mary's voice could dissolve bone. She twists violently around in her seat so that she can glare back at both of them with waspish fury.

Trish turn to her, eyes simultaneously sharp and soft, a distinct change from her mood just a moment ago. "Lady, we talked about this. We agreed-"

"I know what we agreed to, but by the time you get around to it, we'll have reached port and given _him_ ," she jerks her chin at Vergil like she's aiming one of her guns, "plenty of chances to get away! He _needs_ to hear this."

Lady turns to Vergil with her mismatched gaze steeled by protective distrust, anger turning her gunpowder and blood scent into an unpleasant sting in his nostrils. Vergil has to resist the urge to sneeze. “Listen here, Vergil. I don’t like this. I don’t like the thought of you going anywhere near your brother after everything that’s happened, but the fact of the matter is that Dante is getting worse and the only thing that ever seems to help him is _you_.”

“Getting worse?” Vergil asks slowly, alarm and apprehension settling low in his gut like a fluttering, leaden weight. His mind flashes back to the pained intuition he experienced last night. Only twice in his life has ever he felt its like - the night of the fire, and the night of the fall. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that Dante is currently sitting in his office, drinking himself half to death all because you left him, thinking he didn’t want you around anymore, when I know for a fact that it’s the only thing he’s wanted for decades,” Mary says through gritted teeth, ever word hissing with the sort of temper that comes from the familiar kind of frustration unique to dealing with someone particularly blind. Irksome. “He hasn’t showered in days, he hasn’t cleaned anything, you could build a second office with the amount of booze bottles scattered around, and I honestly don’t think he’s eaten any actual food in the last few days. Maybe all week. Just before we finished hotwiring the car, we heard something explode.”

Vergil feels something in him go cold, ice water replacing the blood in his veins. If the way her expression tenses further is anything to go by, Mary isn’t done with him yet.

“You want to know the worst part from my perspective?” Mary asks him, low and deceptively even.

“Not particularly,” he replies, wary, just a hair’s breadth from reaching into the sea of his soul and retrieving the Yamato. He regrets dismissing her so that he could fit unhindered in the crowded, trash cluttered mess that is the interior of Dante’s car. Her presence would be very welcome right now.

“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” Mary continues as if she hadn’t heard him, eyes that bear the generational scar of Sparda’s bloodpact boring into him. Vergil breathes around the foul lump forming in his throat that tastes of bitter dread. “Far from it. And when it happens, the root cause can more often than not be traced back to you in some way. Not always, but a lot.”

Vergil’s voice comes out more roughly that he intends. “How many times?”

“I don’t know,” she admits after a moment of scrutiny that almost sends his hackles raising with impatience, looking frustrated and perhaps a little contrite. Her lips purse. The seat makes an unpleasant noise as her nails scratch over it. “I checked in on him when I could - that’s what the debts started as - but between getting my career on track, paying my own bills and everything else, I mostly caught him in the middle of a bad stint when I realized it was happening at all. The episodes started to mellow out over the years, but by then it just seemed like it never ended.”

The scattered papers, books and pizza boxes. The unwashed windows. The smell of potent booze. The lines that have carved themselves into his brother’s face.

Everything V had disregarded at in his risky audacity. Everything Vergil had overlooked in his contentment and his misplaced confidence in knowledge a lifetime out of date.

Oh Dante, Vergil thinks, and closes his eyes to breathe and recenter himself. There is a storm growing thick and turbulent in his chest, just beneath his lungs. It’s not guilt that drives it, but it’s also not quite anything else - a mixing of unease with the kind of grim realization that only hindsight can give.

He wrestles it all down with the sort of mastery only a decade of solitude could teach him. There are better uses for his time at the moment than spending it on misery from a second-hand source.

When he opens his eyes, Mary is still staring at him, the look on her face unreadable for all the tells she gives him. A predator stalking prey, waiting for the quarry to give something away.

“Tell me why should I believe that you actually give a damn about what happens to him?” She asks, implacable as stone. The question rockets through him with the force of one of Dante’s bullets, and the burning anger it inspires is just as potent.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Vergil spits out, teeth gritting. Trish tenses next to him, sensing the flare of blue that surges through his veins like gusts of arid wind, ready to be unleashed at the first word. He tempers it so as to not let it run wild, but does nothing about the small red glow of his eyes that light up the back of the seat in front of him.

“Oh? What’s there not to understand?” Mary has the gall to ask, a bitter smirk curving her unpainted lips. Her fingers dance along the handle of her handgun menacingly. Trish’s foot taps more forcefully against her arm, to no avail. “You raised a portal to the Underworld, killing and injuring hundreds in the process, and lured Dante there all for the sake of getting _power_. Once the way was open, you abandoned him there and he had to clean up _your_ mess. Then look at what you do 24 years later! From my perspective, my doubts are pretty reasonable.”

And yet she only has half the story, it seems. Vergil pulls the rest of his power back in under his iron will, his eyes reverting along with the claws that dig into the sleeves of his coat.

Sniffing quietly, he looks out the window, disinterested. “Would you not have done whatever it took to achieve justice for a grievous wrong?”

“I did,” Mary counters, causing Vergil to tune back in with a small frown. Her smirk deepens until it is a step away from a grimace. The scar on her nose twists into an ugly shape. “I sacrificed my education, my friendships, my home, my relationships with my relatives, my clean legal record and every single cent I could beg, borrow and steal to get my hands on the tools I’d need to hunt the monster that killed my mother down. I despised an entire species without exception and used it as extra justification for why I needed to do it. Nothing mattered but getting revenge for what happened to my family.”

She looks him straight in the eye without hesitation, with her grimacing lips and shadowed eyes that bear the weight of her past like it’s another weapon in her arsenal, and asks, “Sound familiar?”

There’s a hiss on his breathe that seethes with faint outrage, the urge to lash out for her presumption and ignorance, but beneath it is a feeling not dissimilar to having ice water dumped over him. He can’t help the way his face tightens automatically, but he is able to shift it into a scowl that he hopes doesn’t give away his unease, burying it beneath well worn pride and simmering indignation.

Whatever she takes his silence as, it doesn’t seem to cause Mary any pleasure. Her expression drops in favor of something more flat, and a little tired. Trish, who has so far remained quietly watchful, gives a quiet sigh and leans forward to run her fingers through brown hair. Resentment flares beneath his breast again.

“Of course, it’s not _exactly_ the same,” Mary admits easily enough, leaning her head into the contact briefly before retreating away. Trish wraps her arms around the headrest in favor of leaning back. “I’m not stupid enough to say there aren’t any differences between the circumstances or even the motives - for one thing, Dante’s convinced himself that you were after justice despite your shitty methods a few years ago.”

An unreadable look passes over her face, looking into the far distance for a brief moment. When it passes, distaste becomes visible in the way brow furrows and her nose wrinkles. “Even so, it is, along with a host of other reasons - including stuffing us into puppets, by the way - enough that I don’t like you very much, Vergil. I’ve got a lot of problems with you and what you did, but the thing that pisses me off the most is the thought that the reason why you did it all was just might have been the same as the reason why I let Mary die and became Lady all those years ago.”

Slowly, Vergil gives a small nod of understanding, willing the minuscule, agitated shivers under his skin to settle. He owes them nothing, especially not a human who so clearly detests him and a demon loyal to his brother, yet his mouth wants to form around an admission. It would take more force of will to say it than to remain silent, but even Vergil can concede that there is a point when silence becomes more of a burden than a tool, and that he’s long since passed it.

“You _are_ missing one vital fact,” he acquiesces, reluctant and unhappy.

Lady gives a grunt of acknowledgement.

“It was never just about power,” Vergil clarifies. “It was about acquiring enough power that I never had to lose everything dear to me again.”

It takes a second, but then her mismatched eyes light up in comprehension. Something complicated and grim glints in her gaze, only to be quickly hidden away behind a wry, peculiar smile. Lady nods sharply, and allows her shoulders finally relax. “Then do what you can. He needs you. God knows I shouldn’t try at this point...”

“There’s also the matter of the deed,” Trish says, off-hand, causing Lady to frown at her quizzically.

“I thought we agreed it would be best not to mention that,” she points out.

“We weren’t,” Trish agrees with a pointed shrug. “But then again, we also agreed that you were going to let me do the talking.”

Turning to Vergil, her face takes on a somber cast. “In light of this revealing conversation, I think it’s best to get this out in the open. You know the deed Dante has to his shop? The one he keeps in that safe in his desk?”

“I do, though I can’t help but wonder why you know where he keeps it,” Vergil replies absently, mind going back to the day of their return. Dante had retrieved the deed from Morrison tucked it away as soon as they were inside the safety of the shop. There had been nothing unusual about it or the encounter. Morrison had seemed ecstatic to see his brother, but Vergil had been more invested in relearning the feel of the unaltered human world through his own, superhuman senses.

“Not important!” Trish waves him off impatiently, causing his eyes to narrow in suspicion. “What _is_ important is that Dante gave the deed to Morrison before the mission against Urizen. The weird thing is, Dante’s _never_ done that before. Lady and I can’t think of a single mission where he’s needed or wanted to hand the deed over. Dante’s hard to figure out on a good day, but I still can’t think of a good reason why he would do it now.”

Brow furrowing, Vergil allows his gaze to slide to the ocean outside, distantly noting that land is now within view of the ferry. Perhaps this is because he still knows his brother somewhat, but the only reason he can think of for why Dante would have ensured his shop would remain with someone he trusted would have been because-

Another chill goes up Vergil’s spine. He glances at Lady and Trish gaze back at him with the same grim sobriety that he knows taints his own expression.

Ah… They’ve come to a similar conclusion.

Perhaps it’s best Vergil doesn’t create a portal straight to Devil May Cry after all. He has a multitude of new information to contemplate, and his gut instinct tells him it would be foolish to approach his brother ill-prepared.

* * *

 

The moon sits midnight high in the sky, light pouring over the door to Devil May Cry. When he looks, the glass windows are cracked, and several parts of the brick walls have either fallen or have fractures. Above Vergil, the neon sign hums bright and loud, a constant buzz that irritates after having been away for several weeks. Inside him, the quiet, urgent energy that races through his muscles pulls at him, coaxing him to open the door.

His hand grips the doorknob tightly, yet here has Vergil stood since his brother’s hunting partners had dropped him off some minutes ago. Across the street, one of the city’s old time-clocks chimes, counting off the twelfth hour and the start of the new cycle.

That he is wary and apprehensive is a given, as frustrated at it makes him. Why he’s allowing it to cause him to hesitate, though, Vergil doesn’t quite know.

The Yamato’s hilt fits his other hand well, having been summoned from the void and re-attached to his belt as soon as there was room to do so. The steady, quiet vibration of her aura has always been a boon to his focus, sharpening his mind’s eye like the razor edge of her blade. She is a comfort, and though he had once resented that he needed her to be that for him in the beginning, there has never been anything that worked quite so well.

Vergil breathes, inhaling the night air and cataloguing the scents. Smog and exhaust from the traveling cars. The stench of humans as they travel the opposing sidewalk, instinct telling them to avoid the shop like small animals avoid a mountain lion’s den. Trash from the building next door waiting to be picked up. Stale, potent old booze wafting out from the cracks in the window.

The scent of a demon’s claim, familiar and rose-tinted as Vergil remembers, but underlaid now with the bittersweet tinge of sickness and ill-health. Even just the small whiff is enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

His hand tightens around the knob. He makes himself turn it, and the door immediately sags a little like it’s only on a single hinge. It’s no problem to keep it steady as Vergil swings it open, but the overwhelming aroma of evaporating alcohol that sweeps into his face immediately causes his eyes to water. Nose screaming in burning anguish, he lets go of the door in favor of bringing his vest over the lower half of his face, allowing it to tilt at an awkward angle. He fiddles around before flipping on a light switch, the electricity guttering like a dying animal before surging to life with illuminating brilliance in the few still-working lights.

Through the water distorting his vision, the office looks as if a particularly vengeful pack of Chaos’ had been unleashed upon it. The desolation is total, not even the windows or floor spared. An ocean of broken litters the floor like an attempt to hinder his progress, surrounded by dark, deeply-set stains that look hours old.

There are no hints of blood or gore, no scent or remains of other demons; no signs of a fight having broken out despite the destruction. Instead, when he looks at the closest marks on the walls, the rents are familiar in shape. Beneath the suffocating stench lingers a familiar power that dances across Vergil’s like an incitement, one that he has known since before he was born.

Vergil frowns deeply beneath the cloth protecting him. There is nothing else it could be - Dante did this. The question is - why?

The first thing Vergil does before venturing further into the room is open the windows to try and clear the air. It will do little for the rest of the room, but at least there will be a pocket of uncontaminated oxygen he can retreat to near the door. Once that’s done, Vergil glances around.

Almost instantly, his eyes find his brother, collapsed and still as a corpse on the broken couch. His heart feels like it jumps high in his throat, sticking there as he allows himself to examine Dante with a kind of avarice that he can never quite satiate. His feet take him closer almost without permission until he’s hovering at his brother’s side, foot kicking aside one of the only intact bottles in the room.

Vergil glances at it briefly, reading the label as it rolls. His frown deepens, but he doesn’t linger on it for long.

Just as Lady warned, Dante does not look… well. The old lines in his face, signs of long-unreleased stress, seem to have deepened in the month Vergil has been gone. They give him an aged, sickly look. It combines with the pallor of his unmarked skin, the greasiness of the hair that brushes the tops of his shoulders at the shortest, and the dark, bruised marks under his eyes into an image that would not be out of place in a somber hospital bed. He’s barefoot, and his threadbare shirt and sweatpants look like they’ve been slept in for days, sweat staining the fabric. Two of his limbs hang off the couch in a lazy sprawl, and his face is turned away as if to avoid looking at the room. Dante’s expression is still, peaceful for all that it is haggard, and it’s only now that it occurs to Vergil that he hasn’t seen his brother truly at rest since they were children.

The pang that strikes his chest leaves him breathless in a way that has nothing to do with the smell. He doubts this time is an exception, comatose as Dante appears.

“Dante,” he calls out, voice muffled soft yet unbearably loud in the dead, oppressive stillness of the office.

Dante doesn’t stir. If Vergil couldn’t see his brother’s chest move, he would doubt that his brother was even breathing. He reaches out to touch Dante’s unshaven cheek, just to feel that living warmth against his skin. Then he remembers the last time he did so, and thinks better of it.

With nothing better to do and unwilling to wait in a haze of fumes strong enough to make a lesser human drunk, Vergil makes himself busy. Said fumes thankfully manage to masquerade the underlying scent that threatens to make his gorge raise, allowing him to open the rest of the office windows in peace. One of them is stuck in the frame, and Vergil has to carefully force the mechanism just to shove it up.

With the fan resting on the floor in pieces, Vergil has to make due with regularly circulating the air with magic in between rounds of sweeping up glass and debris. Most of the alcohol that was still inside any bottles has long since dried up, but that just means it had plenty of time to eat through the floor’s finish and stain it irrevocably. It’s also the largest source of the smell in the room, which adds more floor space to the long list of renovations that Dante will need to have done if he wants to continue using the office for his business. At least when Vergil goes to check the rest of the building, nothing else appears nearly as damaged as the front room. Neglected, caked in dust and cobwebs as if Dante couldn’t be bothered to clean, but nothing looked like it needed replacing.

He does find a disturbing number of intact bottles of extremely high-proof alcohol in both the kitchen and Dante’s bedroom, none of which were there before Vergil had left. Most of them are empty.

Vergil takes a trip out into the back to grab some spare pots to see if he can’t salvage the ferns in the office, but one look at the wilting, sometimes discolored flora in his brother’s sanctuary brings him even more questions. Dante loves his garden almost as much as he loves a good fight. Has he not taken care of it since Vergil left?

Throughout all of this, Dante seldom stirs despite the inevitable racket Vergil makes. Every time he looks over his shoulder to see his brother still dead to the world, silent and unmoving as the grave, he has to restrain the growing urge to disregard his caution and shake Dante awake.

Things continue in this vein for some time. It’s not until the hour hand has touched the 1 that Vergil, having done all he could in the office and now sitting at his brother’s desk chair to read, finally hears something break the silence.

He looks up quickly. Dante’s face is scrunched in pain, hand coming up to rub his forehead and press into his eyes. A quiet hiss escapes him, and he clumsily tries to push himself up into a sitting position with one hand.

Vergil closes his book with a quiet snap, but any sound in the office is already too loud. Dante startles, his hand falling to his lap, and peers at Vergil with dull, sleep-glazed eyes.

The silence stretches, the air quickly becoming tense and awkward. Vergil opens his mouth to say something, but doesn’t get the chance when his brother puts his head in his hands and gives a shaking, defeated sigh.

“Fucking hell,” Dante curses quietly, thickly, his shoulders slumping and his back bowing beneath the weight of his thoughts. “He’s not there. You know he’s not there. Just ignore it, pick your ass up and move on.”

“Dante,” Vergil calls out again.

In response, his brother’s teeth visibly grit. Dante throws himself up with an overly aggressive huff, but immediately has to steady himself on the couch. His chest heaves like he’s struggling to breathe. Small, choked gasps slip between the gaps of the fingers that clamp over his mouth. Alarmed, Vergil stands up, stepping around the desk and already closing the distance between them. He’s never seen his brother like this before - not after their spars, not as young men when the gap between their strength was measurable in blood spilled, not even back when they were children subject to slightly more human limits - without the strength of their awakened heritage. It disturbs him on a level Vergil didn’t expect to feel.

He quickly blinks away the image of phantom cracks on his brother’s skin and tells himself not to be ridiculous. Dante is ill, not dying.

(He once had barely a concept of the difference between the two states, unable to experience such things due to his physiology’s advantages versus human ailments. The few times Eva had been sick, his childish imagination had conceived of it as being little more than an inch from the grave.

Vergil is not so ignorant now. Not when Mundus had forced him to learn the difference.)

“Dante,” he tries again, this time putting a hint of force into his tone.

Instinct flares in an instant. His brother’s form goes ridgid, muscles still honed and capable despite his body’s weakness. Red flares across Vergil’s senses, firecrackers and lightning and a lake of boiling sulfur. His brother’s eponymous blade appears in his hand with a blaze of demonic energy and swings for his neck.

It strikes against the Yamato’s hard sheath, the air ringing with the clash of vibrating steel. The edge was true, poised to take Vergil’s head, but the strike was lazy at best, not even close to the level of their first reunion decades ago. Lacking any sense of urgency or true force, it’s a simple thing to parry his brother’s sword off to the side, sending Dante off-balance.

It’s a mercy that Vergil reaches out and catches Dante’s sword arm by the wrist, watching his pale eyes go wide with stunned incomprehension. He uses it to help steady his brother, giving him something solid and immovable with which to pull himself back. The flesh under his hand is clammy and cool to the touch, unusually so when Dante has always been a living furnace of infernal heat.

Vergil gives his brother a stern look, making his displeasure apparent. “Honestly, brother. I thought we had moved past you trying to kill me. That wasn’t even a good attempt.”

The over-bright gleam in his twin’s eyes is feverish, vulnerable and wide with incomprehension. “Vergil...?” Dante asks quietly, voice sandpaper rough like he’s screamed until his vocal chords were shredded and his body is refusing to heal the damage. The skin under his palm begins to shiver with gooseflesh. His sword clatters to the floor.

Brotherly concern softens him without permission. Tension wreathes itself around him like armor, anticipating a rejection that Dante is not in a state to give. It’s not what he needs right now, and so Vergil chooses to expel it with his next breath.

“Yes,” Vergil assures, scanning Dante’s sorry state over once more. “Also, a hallucination? Don’t be so foolish when I’m standing right in front of you.”

While the extent of the affliction is unknown, it’s nonetheless deeply worrying to see. Human world substances pass through their bodies at absurd paces - even large amounts of concentrated toxins shouldn’t do more than slow them down for an hour at most. It shouldn’t be possible for demons of their level, even ones of partial human blood, to be weakened to this degree. Not without continuous, persistent effort.

Vergil’s concern grows when Dante doesn’t so much as acknowledge the gentle barb. His twin just continues his owlish staring, like he can’t believe what’s in front of his eyes.

“Vergil…?” He repeats, sounding just as bewildered as before. “What are you…? No, but…”

He shakes his head as if to clear it, but all the motion succeeds in doing is upset Dante’s balance, causing him to stagger. Heart leaping into his throat, Vergil is quick to steady him with a hand on his other arm.

Just like the last time Vergil attempted to touch Dante, his brother flinches, trying to back away on feet as stable than a newborn fawn’s. Vexation burns through his veins, and Vergil decides that he’s not going to let Dante get away from him this time. He tightens his grip.

“Be still, Dante,” Vergil says, flat and impatient. His eyes narrow when Dante shakes his head again, breathing picking up. Nerves start to prickle under Vergil’s skin, but it’s easy to ignore for the moment.

“No,” Dante replies, face lowered and partially obscured by longer silver hair. “No, you’re… You’re not supposed to be here. You’re… Fortuna… I-”

“As you can see, I’m not-”

The sensation of nerves prickling becomes more intense. Dante continues to try and tug weakly out of Vergil’s grip, growing more urgent with every pull. Under his palm, Vergil feels Dante’s power begin to stir in earnest. “Let go of me,” his brother demands.

“Not this time,” Vergil replies harshly, fingers tightening hard enough to leave bruises on a human. The irony of this exchange - that _he_ is the brother chasing after his other half -  doesn’t escape him. If this were any other circumstance, he might have even laughed.

Clawed, unusually clumsy fingers scratch at Vergil’s hand, frantically, causing blood to drip and make their skin slippery. If his grip were any looser than it is, Dante would be able to slip free. “Let go of me! Get out, go!”

Red continues to stir into an ocean of infernal flame, yet the flow is hesitant, directionless. Almost… like it’s being stifled. “Dante-”

Dante lifts his face, sweat-slicked and pale, and the pupils of his wide-pleading eyes are constricted to panicked pinpricks. “Let me go!”

It finally registers to Vergil that the thing setting the animal instinct in the back of his mind off, beneath the sulfur heat and heartbeat pulse of his brother’s energy, the scent of alcohol, filth and sickness, is the enticing spice of _fear_.

“Vergil!” Dante shouts, ragged, and the only thing Vergil can register, above the wild currents of red lightning electrifying his every nerve and the stench of gathering power, the infernal fires glowing underneath Dante’s skin - the precursor to his demonic form, is how _scared_ his little brother sounds.

There is an instinct, embedded deep into the undersized bones of an older brother within Vergil. It’s an instinct that is as much an intrinsic part of him as the human’s heritage in his veins, unable to be fully separated from him by even Mundus’ most foul machinations. One that, as it ever has, howls a single name from the furthest depths of his core.

 

_Dante - Dante - Dante_

 

Vergil’s fingers harden into claws, digging into Dante’s wrist with a strength his brother can’t hope to break. His other hand darts up to grip the back of his twin’s neck, fingers latching on with firm authority. Contact established on multiple points, Vergil stirs the arid gales of blue essentia inside himself and sends it hurtling along the conduit of his arms.

Vergil has always held a theory - one inspired by the abnormality of his and his brother’s twin nature. It’s a long-shot, and this impulse idea of his wouldn’t even be feasible if he and Dante weren’t what they are, but inaction has never come to Vergil naturally. Not where Dante is concerned.

Demons do not have twins. Not in the sense that humans do. They have siblings, but of any true twins born from a single zygote, at least one invariably dies in the womb. Their souls are too inflexible to recover from the sundering involved in two beings forming from one, and as such fall apart when it attempting to inhabit more than a single body. Human souls, on the other hand, are capable of extraordinary feats of regeneration if given time and support. Twins born to humans come from a single soul, yet their fractured pieces regenerate and eventually become two new, whole souls, with not even a scar to show for their violent origin.

Logically, it follows that twin children born of a demon and a human would retain the protective rigidity of a demon, designed to stand firm in the whirlwind of their own supernatural power, while still inheriting the ability to survive and recover like a human. Two halves of a single soul, split and separated and stuck in a sort of limbo state, forever connected in ways that souls are not meant to be bound.

Under ordinary circumstances, his brother’s power would act as something like an immune system, fighting against any invaders attempting to infect his soul. Even to Vergil, his perfect other half, it acts as something of a barrier - a wall of solid crimson energy that offers substantial resistance in proportion to Dante’s strength. Right now, however, when Dante is weakened, divided, and calling out to him, his soul seems to welcome him, offering no opposition to the blue threads of Vergil’s power.

With a simple exertion of will, it is a frankly disturbingly simple matter to lock his brother’s rampaging demonic power down, forcing it back into repose.

“ _Enough_ ,” Vergil decrees, not says, will and hands firm. His chest rumbles with demonic undertones that vibrate through him into the rest of his body.

He has to quickly drop his hold over Dante’s wrist as his brother’s knees give out. Vergil catches Dante by the waist, pressing them together from hip to chest. Like this, he can feel his heart pound through their ribs almost as if it were Vergil’s own.

Seconds pass, and yet Dante seems content to remain limp in his grasp. His full weight takes almost nothing to support, requiring only a fraction of Vergil’s strength.

Like this, nose almost pressed into his twin’s hair, the sickly-sweet odor of poor health is overpoweringly nauseating. Vergil has to switch to breathing out through his mouth. Stubborn, he tries not to make it obvious.

He allows the hand grasping the back of his brother’s neck to fall down around his shoulders. The simple, chaste contact manages to feel unbearably intimate in the lingering silence. It feels almost like an embrace, which sends his pulse pounding through his veins for reasons Vergil doesn’t immediately understand. Then Vergil is startled to realize that simply supporting Dante like this is the longest he’s been in contact with another living being in _years_.

Vergil focuses on Dante instead. “Dante?”

“What…,” his brother’s voice comes out slurred from where his head is buried in Vergil’s shoulder - though, whether by fatigue or residual grogginess is up for debate. “What the hell di’dju do...?”

“Can you stand?” Vergil asks in lieu of answering.

“Wha…? Probly not…”

Vergil sets Dante back down on the couch, leaving him to groan in misery and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes as he searches his coat for his luggage. Most of the cases contain simple necessities like clothing and his work supplies. His smallest case, however holds all of his emergency supplies. Being on the run from a young age taught him the importance of having a few easy transport items on hand for those rare, just-in-case scenarios.

Taking out a brown toat the size of his thumbnail, he places it on the ground and whispers the command word for it to enlarge. It grows to the size of a large medical kit with a locking seal painted around the rim; a precaution to keep the kit from accidentally opening on him rather than to protect against theft. Inside the lid is a complex lattice of preservation seals, designed to keep the contents as fresh as the day he put them in. Vergil rarely keeps more than a stash of demonic fluids, wrapped organs and red orbs, just in case his demonic energy is flagging and he needs a quick boost after a battle. It’s only really useful if he gives his body time to process the food - a fact which he regrets not taking heed of before making his attempt on Mundus, but it has nonetheless come in handy more than once over the years. 

This time around, Vergil has taken great pains to acquire a vital star. Half of it is already gone; given to Kyrie in order to teach her and Nero how to create the potion he’s going to make. It’s one of their father’s making, if he remembers rightly. Not an elegant mixture by any means, but it gets the job done.

Vergil takes a glass from the kitchen and squeezes half of the remaining star fragment into it. The brightly glowing juice that spills out over his fingers leaves them tingling from the sharp potency of the invigorating liquid. Once all of it has been drained, he absently chews on the husk and and grabs a handful of red orbs. Red orbs are more than just crystallized demon blood - the reason why demons consider them valuable at all is because the crystallization process concentrates the blood in a manner similar to how the Qliphoth concentrates human blood into its fruit. The effect of consuming just one orb is wholly unremarkable; but if one were to, say, channel them through something like a Divinity Statue, the entire purpose of which is to cultivate new levels of demonic power, sacrificing hundreds or sometimes even thousands of orbs…

The significance of the effect over time can be quite dramatic.

The resulting powder from crushing the orbs mixes into the vital star’s juices after a little shaking, but then Vergil has to pause, frowning. The final ingredient in his father’s recipe is human blood - only a few drops being completely necessary, but they are the final component needed to amplify both the vital star’s and the orbs’ properties.

His first thought is to go out and find a human to bleed, yet the thought of leaving Dante alone in this state gives him pause. He has little doubt that when he returned, he would find Dante reaching for another bottle. If not that, then perhaps attempting to follow him out into the streets. Neither are entirely palatable options. His brother will just have to make due with Vergil’s half-demonic blood.

Claws bite into the skin of his palm, letting several drops of his blood drip into the potion before giving it another shake. The result has a deep purple glow where it normally is mulberry in shade due to the strange proportions, but the beauty of crude potions means that there is less of a proper recipe and more just an ingredient ratio that can be adjusted as needed.

Dante’s hands are clumsy when he shoves the drink into them, and his shying away from Vergil’s touch makes it difficult to keep it from shattering on the floor, but they manage it somehow. After a bit of cajoling, he drains the glass of every drop. There’s a few moments where it seems like Dante is going to be sick, but he breathes through it enough to keep it down. His colors improves by the second, and the glassy, unfocused look in his eyes fades.

Shuddering, Dante coughs into his hand. “Vital star, my favorite.” He sets the glass aside on the side table, almost missing it completely. “Why does everything good for you taste like ass?”

Vergil hands him one of the water bottles he purchased at a rest stop on the way here instead of answering. He takes with a dip of his head, gulping half of it down in seconds.

Dante looks up at him through his eyelashes, passing the plastic battle between his hands. “Soooo… How’s Nero doing? I hear Fortuna’s nice this time of year.”

“Quite well,” Vergil replies, putting his supplies away again. “His family have been gracious hosts, though I do wish their foster children would refrain from calling me “grandpa Vergil”. And spending an entire month in close quarters with Ms. Goldstein has reminded me how glad I was that she never met you during your teenage years.”

“No shit, huh?” Vergil is sure that if Dante had the anatomy to do so, his ears would be perking visibly. “And huh… How uh… How’s house hunting going?”

“Terribly,” he admits with a grimace. “Thought I’ve decided to put a hold on my search to deal with… personal matters, after a conversation with Nero the night before.” Vergil crosses his arms over his chest with a deliberately casual motion. “It was very introspective and... enlightening.”

The hum his brother gives him is inquiring, but there is a small note of caution in the set of his face now.

“I know you’ve been contacting Nero about me,” Vergil says, mouth pressed into a displeased line. Now that Dante is visibly stronger, the resentments, irritation and hurt return with a fierce ache as if to remind him of their existence. Part of him wants to accuse Dante of spying, just to see what his reaction would be, but Vergil has no definitive proof. “Why?”

“Goddamn it, kid,” Dante curses under his breath. Vergil taps his fingers against his arm, impatiently. “Well, this is awkward. I know I specifically asked Nero to _not_ say anything about that. Next time I see him, I’m gonna shove my boot up his ass.”

“You don’t get to discipline _my_ son for telling me something as a part of his defense of you, Dante,” Vergil tells him in no uncertain terms. “Cease your stalling. Why were you checking on me? Afraid what I was up to something?”

The bottle gives a sharp crackle under his brother’s clenching fingers, irritation cooled only slightly by the knowledge that his nephew defended his honor. His glare is morose instead of heated. “Believe it or not, no, dumbass. You already told me that the Underworld held no value to you and that you were looking for a house _here_ , in the human world. If I can trust anything about you, then I know you’re as good as your word.”

That’s one part of the question cleared up, and much as he doesn’t want to admit it, it takes a small, infinitesimal weight off Vergil’s shoulders along with it. Even so, Vergil tempers the edge of his anger, already feeling the familiar faint shudders trying to build in strength if not for his determination. “Then help me understand, brother. It was obviously important enough to go behind my back to do it.”

“It was-,” Dante begins, glowering heavily, before he visibly reigns himself in and shuts his mouth. A lingering silence falls, the two of them just staring at each other, and it feels like Vergil is trying to bash through the immovable fortress than is his twin’s stubborn silence. It’s silly, childish and unnecessary.

Vergil breathes in and moves to ask again, already beyond tired of this foolishness. Before he can, Dante breaks the silence with an explosive sigh that seems to deflate his entire body. His pale eyes duck behind the long curtain of his hair, but Vergil can still see the stress lines carved into his face deepen.

“The day before you left,” Dante begins, uncharacteristically solem, hesitant and tentative as a kicked dog, “I said... something I shouldn’t have said. I had just woken up from a bad nightmare and I just wanted to be left alone so that I could deal with it like I had been dealing with it for years. But, in the process I said something targeted and hurtful with the intention of driving you off for a while. I...  I’m sorry, by the way. You’re my brother; no matter what happens, you always will be.” He laughs a bitter, humorless sound. “If it were really so simple to throw that away, then life would have been a lot easier.”

Pain lances through Vergil’s chest, feeling himself rent in the same place Dante had cut into him before. Instead of pristine flesh, however, this time the hurt feels something like lancing an infected wound. “Dante,” Vergil utters, hearing a slight rasp to his voice.

“I just wanted to know if you were doing alright after you left,” his brother hurries ahead with familiar bull-headed purpose. “I didn’t think you would want to talk to me, so I asked Nero instead. Of course, I also asked him to keep it to himself so that something like _this_ ,” he twirls his finger in a circle, “wouldn’t happen. He’s getting my boot up his ass, I’m telling you.”

“No disciplining my son, Dante,” Vergil repeats almost absently. He gives a slow shake of his head. “Of all the times for you to develop a sense of boundaries…”

He hears the words coming out of Dante’s mouth, feels the heaviness of the unvoiced request for forgiveness in his chest - in his blood. It should feel like freeing, having his brother openly voicing his wrongs, or at least like victory. Instead, Vergil stares at the bowed crown of Dante’s head as something toxic and burning scorches his insides like acid stripping paint.

There have been many disagreements and grudges that have passed between them, held onto and left unresolved by the simple fact that closure has never fully existed as a concept for them. A lifetime of separation means that it was never allowed to. What bleeds its infection into him is a wound decades old and yet still no closer to knitting shut than the day it was inflicted. It turns his voice to ice and sharpens his words to a cutting edge, and Vergil does nothing to stop it. “You say you were concerned for me, yet not so long ago you seemed content to kill me if I didn’t hand over the Yamato. Before that, when I was still myself, I distinctly remember you promising to stop me from leaving for the Underworld, even if it meant my death.”

Dante flinches, jaw clenching and hands curling into fists. A grim, vindictive sort of satisfaction fills Vergil to see it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Vergil,” he grits out, smell turning soft and mournful that reminds Vergil of freshly-turned grave soil. “Portals and you don’t tend to turn out very well for anyone.”

“So you keep your word as well, it seems.” Vergil smiles, thin as his blade’s edge. “Should I expect that old oath of yours-”

“I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about back then!”

Startled, Vergil flinches back from the sudden shout. Seeing an opportunity, Dante stands and pushes past him, heading right towards the nearest intact, unopened bottle, dropping the rest of the water on the floor in his bee-line march. He bends down to snatch it off the floor next to his desk, wrenching the cap off with no concern for how the metal bites into his skin. Vergil doesn’t need his power to appear at Dante’s side with a burst of speed, placing a finger over the opening before he can start undoing the potion’s limited good. He presses down on the bottle with a steady, easy pressure. Dante resists him, but eventually lets Vergil guide the bottle down to the desktop.

Vergil tries to make eye contact, but his brother’s hair is still in the way. “You didn’t know what you were talking about?”

“I really didn’t,” Dante replies, weary and grave and voice thick with something that sounds like mourning. “Mallet taught me that.”

Vergil has had enough of his brother hiding from him. He’s so close to just cutting Dante’s hair off, but Vergil doesn’t have the patience to deal with coaxing his brother back into a talkative mood after his summoned sword is inevitably mistaken for an attack. He lifts a hand to push the hair out of the way. Dante predictably flinches away from the gesture, a single dark-ringed eye peeking out, wary. When Vergil refuses to lower his hand from where it’s waiting, Dante rolls his eyes and, after what feels like hours of self-warring, pushes his hair back from his face so that Vergil can see him. Voluntarily exposing a soul-crushing grief and a miserable sort of anger directed inwards, a vague emptiness that carves the lines of his face ever deeper. Dante tries to hide behind a wary distance, but Vergil can see something so achingly familiar, having felt it deeply for the last 35 years, that he can mistake it for nothing else.

Pure, unadulterated loneliness.

“What were you going to do if you had killed me at the Qliphoth?” Vergil asks, quiet and firm.

“Dunno.” Dante shrugs, hollow, turning his gaze to something over Vergil’s shoulder. Even looking away, the deep, haunted set of his eyes give the impression of a stone that has been ground into sand. “Guess I figured it was okay to leave everything to Nero. Whatever happened afterwards, I wasn’t gonna leave you, mother and father waiting forever.”

It’s a terrible, sickening thing to hear confirmed, that his conclusion in the car had been right, yet at the same time it causes something hard and lonely and hurting in Vergil to give way. Relief unlike anything he has ever experienced before rocks his core - the burden of what he only now recognizes in its absence as existential terror evaporating into fine mist. He is left feeling brittle as spun glass in its aftermath, and it is simultaneously better and far worse than the anger that quakes his bones or the enmity that keeps them apart. 

Dante is still his.

Vergil breathes through the worst of the storm. When he opens his eyes, he sees Dante looking at him, face unreadable apart from an expansive fatigue that has long-since grown fat on his suffering. Vergil nods his head back at the couch, moving to sit on the end with the most back still intact. Dante joins him uncharacteristically skittish in his own territory, but thankfully leaves the alcohol behind. Vergil thinks he should be proud of him for that.

Palming her sheath, Vergil pulls the Yamato over his lap and glances around the room. “What happened here?”

Briefly, his eyes fall on his brother’s devil sword where it rests on the floor, examining its familiar shape - less elegant than the Rebellion, yet it seems to suit Dante as a man more than its predecessor had. Perhaps it is just Vergil’s bias speaking, but the Rebellion will always belong to the hot-headed youth he once was. Vergil trails along it from tip to hilt, finding he has never actually looked at the sword in detail before; never fully taken in its bisected flat, the four-pronged guard, and past the hilt-

His eyes widen. Is that really…?

“I uh…” Dante winces, a look of apprehension passing over his face as he no doubt totals up his repair costs. With the amount of damage done, it will take months to complete even if he can take a profitable job soon. “Turns out my power and me still don’t have the best relationship. I don’t deny myself like I used to decades ago, but I can’t say that’s really… improved things. It’s easier when I can keep myself under wraps, but - last night? Yeah, last night I got pissed off by something Lady said, and since I already wasn’t doing too hot… well…” Dante scratches his cheek sheepishly. “I may have… _accidentally_ triggered.”

“You handle it like a _tool_ and not a natural extension of yourself,” Vergil says, distracted from his discovery. He rolls his eyes with all the exasperation of an older brother. “Foolishness, Dante.”

“Oh, give me a break. I can still whoop _your_ ass just fine.”

“Devil triggers evolved in demons as defense mechanisms, Dante,” he lectures, ignoring the bait for the embarrassment that it is. Besides, they both know that Vergil is up one after their last spar. “Costly ones at that. The only reason we can use them carelessly as we do is because of our human blood. If your energy is going on the fritz because of emotional upset, then it’s because your demonic instincts are mistaking your emotions for _danger signals_. Still, this does explain Lady’s remark about not being the one to help you.”

“Wait,” Dante blurts out from where he’s leaning with his elbows on his knees, incredulous. “I don’t smell any of her blood… You and Lady spoke to each other, and both of you are _still alive?_ ”

“Quite,” Vergil says flatly, shifting to bring his ankle up to rest on his knee so that he can face his brother more. “Your friends had the courtesy to warn me about the state of things here before I left Fortuna. However, Lady did bring up something that I considered… strange, at the time.”

“... And that would be…?”

“She said that you “convinced yourself that I was after justice”,” Vergil explains, watching his Dante’s face fall in surprise before going worryingly unreadable. ”Care to explain what that means?”

“Damn it, Lady,” his twin curses under his breath. He reaches up to rub at his hair roughly, a familiar gesture of frustration from all the way back in their childhood. Once again, he’s quiet long enough that Vergil doesn’t think he’s going to answer, but seems to resolve himself to it if the air he forcefully blows out his nose is anything to go by.

Dante stares at the floor, words chosen with care as he mulls over his words. As if one misplaced vowel would set back their entire conversation. “After Temen-ni-gru, I spent a long time just _thinking_. About why you did it. Why you needed power so badly. Why you teamed up with that guy. I definitely spent a long time wondering why, when it had been such a large part of your end goal, you chose your half of mother’s amulet over Force Edge. I just couldn’t find an answer that really stuck. It was all I could think about, even when I was trying to convince myself I didn’t care.”

All this time, Vergil had wondered if his brother had ever once thought about his side of things, or if he really was the same selfish, single-minded, negligent child he had once been. It had been such a tremendous source of resentment, only feeding into his desire to find Dante and finally defeat him. Stoking the flames of his rivalry until it was little more than antipathy and rancor. Perhaps Vergil will stop being surprised by Dante surpassing his expectations one day.

“The final pieces of the puzzle came when I saw Nelo Angelo fighting on Mundus’ side and realized it was you. I knew there was no way you would serve him willingly - not after what he did to us. Then Trish tells me you tried to _fight_ Mundus, after falling.” Dante continues, hands clenching into tight fists, shoulders bowing as grief visibly reasserts itself. Vergil has to rub his chest as an echoing pain rings through him. “I didn’t put it all together immediately - was too busy drowning myself in denial, then just drowning myself in some futile attempt to stop the night terrors - but then Nero appeared out of nowhere, I got my head on… _straighter_ , and the answer was right there.” Dante meets his eyes. “You were trying to avenge us. ‘Course, the whole Qliphoth deal sort of tried to throw that out the window...”

Slowly, Vergil nods in understanding, letting himself sag slightly. “You were right,” he admits, and sighs. “It seems I am the one who owes you an apology now.”

“Not saying no,” Dante, ever the brat, says, “but what for?”

“All this time, you’ve tried to understand me, and yet I don’t believe I’ve done the same for you,” he admits.

The words taste bitter like ash in his mouth; an admission of weakness that leaves him on the back foot. Yet the trappings of what remains of his honor, a cloak and comfort just as much as the Yamato always has been, make this demand of him. For his part, Dante gives him his full attention, listening to Vergil without a hint of judgement for perhaps the first time in his life. While not encouraging, it at least doesn’t make saying this any harder.

“The day I left, I felt rejected. Because I always felt I had been able to accurately read you in the past, the very fact that you were now able to hide yourself from me so well felt like you were shunning me from having a place in your life.” Vergil has to turn away from the understanding in his brother’s eyes, the guilt lacing its edges, and the compassion trailing in its wake. “I privileged my fear over trying to understand what was really going on. I didn’t even stop to consider.”

Dante huffs a humorless laugh. “Verg, I’ve gotten _really_ good at lying to people over the years. It was how I survived as a kid.” With the back of the couch mostly gone on his side, he has to brace himself on his hands when he leans back. When he smiles, it is empty and coldly sorrowful - a self-recrimination. “And to be fair, you haven’t had the years I’ve had to practically stew over this shit. Maybe if I hadn’t let you fall-”

“Do not,” he cuts in, low and sharp as a sword edge, “try to take the blame for _my_ actions, Dante. You did not _let_ me fall - I chose to fall on my own. If you have any respect for me, let my consequences be my own.”

For a moment, it seems like he wants to protest, brow furrowed deeply and frowning with obvious displeasure. The next, Dante’s face goes solemn, still having some regard for his older brother it seems, nodding his - reluctant - ascent.

Vergil’s fingers loosen from around the Yamato’s sheath. “As I was saying. I had privileged my fear of rejection instead of trying to understand the situation. Something you must understand, brother, is that the day I discovered you still lived was the happiest I had been in 9 years.”

Nothing had compared to that joy. So pure and simple was it that Vergil had lost the ability to concentrate on anything but. His life had quickly reshaped itself, all of it revolving around that one simple revelation. “I thought I had lost everything that night, yet there you were. But then I realized that I still had something left to lose, and that was… frankly terrifying. So when you said that I lost the right to be your brother, the one thing I feared most was the prospect that I had lost you after all. That is why I left.”

“Vergil…” Dante’s voice comes out choked by innumerable emotions - not a single one of them condemning, and yet they inspire the same pain as if Dante had taken his words and tossed them back in his face.

He looks over when a source of heat begins to warm the air next to his hand, finding Dante’s hand lingering close by. His pinkie twitches closer as if to touch, yet retreats before contact is made. His twin seems… visibly frustrated by this.

“Is there something about me you’re afraid of,” Vergil asks, feeling like he’s aged all his missing years in the span of a single night, “or about yourself?”

“... Me,” Dante replies at last. Vergil can work with that.

Vergil places his hand over top of Dante’s, ignoring his brother’s flinch and how he goes ramrod straight. The pain in his chest returns with a fierce ache and only seems to grow as faint trembles roll across Dante’s skin. His demonic energy tries to stir itself again, driven by whatever plagues him, but Vergil is able to sooth it back easily. Contact is lovely when it doesn’t make you want to claw your own skin off, he notes.

“I cannot remember what it was like to exist back then. The knowledge is still there, but I cut those memories out of myself because I didn’t want them,” he says softly, tightening his grip every so slightly. “I could tell you that you freed me that day; that you saved me. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that, for you, that day has never been anything but your worst nightmare.”

His brother’s voice trembles, thick and overwhelmed. “Vergil-”

“The only thing I can say to you, brother, is that if only one of us could have survived that day, I’m glad it was you.”

“I’m sorry about the amulet,” Dante chokes out.

“Don’t be. It’s right there,” Vergil says, pointing to the familiar ruby shape embedded in the pommel of his brother’s devil sword. Safe, preserved, glorified.

Before he can react, Dante jackknifes with a high-pitched, sobbing whine, arms wrapping themselves tightly around his torso. Crimson lightning erupts off his skin now that the connection between them has broken. Vergil fights back the ache that tries to drive him breathless, pulling Dante up so that he can see his face. Warm, salt-water tears coat his fingers on contact, but Vergil ignores it for the moment in favor of threading azure through vermilion.

When simple pulling yields resistance, Vergil pushes himself into Dante’s lap, straddling his thighs and giving him no room to go anywhere but into Vergil’s body. Overcome, his twin gives up on fighting him quickly. Instead, Dante latches onto his torso with every ounce of his strength, burying his head in the crook of Vergil’s neck to muffle the sobs that suffocate his every breath. He holds onto his twin’s shoulders just as firmly.

“I’m so happy you’re back,” Dante says into his vest, reedy and made weak by decades of sorrow. Back from the dead. Back from Fortuna. Back in his life. It doesn’t matter - all are applicable.

It’s a bit more tricky to do because the appendages do not normally exist on his human form, but still Vergil summons the wings of his most powerful form and encloses them both. In the freedom of a small, dark space, Dante convulses, crying hard enough to shake his entire body, the smell of booze and fading sickness thick almost drowned entirely by saltwater tears. The collar of his vest grows wet and warm. Vergil couldn’t give less of a damn.

It cannot be helped; with his brother suffering in his arms, Vergil feels his own face grow wet. There will be no shame in this - not when they are together.

Only when the tears begin to slow does he dare course his power through his wings. Whirling patterns light up, bathing their bodies in a blue-fire glow. Vergil coaxes Dante’s head up enough that he can rest their foreheads together. This close, his wet eyes look so tired.

“Sorry about that.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Don’t really know what came over me. Just, every time you touched me, I was happy but… I also couldn’t not remember...”

“That happiness was plagued by the memory of all the anguish that came before it,” Vergil guesses, and is rewarded by a glimmer of _relief_ that softens Dante’s entire face. Looks like he wasn’t the only one who missed their once-cherished childhood transparency with each other. He can’t resist the urge to tease. “I believe you’ve apologized to me more in an hour than you have in your entire life, brother.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Dante snipes back, yet there is a glimmer of humor in the slight uptick of his lips. Vergil instantly misses it when it is lost beneath the wave of fatigue that causes Dante to slump forward, leaning into him with all his weight.

“I never asked you before, but I find I would like to try again. Would you allow me to stay here, with you, brother? It is… lonely, without you.”

"We were never meant to be alone." Dante says it as if revealing some sacred mandate - a self-evident truth that is no more available for contest or scrutiny than the bones upholding the universe. "That's why there's two of us. So yeah. I’d like that, brother."

He wants to kiss him.

“Don’t let go,” Vergil says, the words feeling too much like a plea for his comfort, yet he can’t bare taking them back. His body is too small to contain the depths of his emotion - entirely too human to not bend before the strength of the love that has ruled him since the day they were born into this world. 

Dante’s arms becoming like steel bars around his torso. His lungs fill with his twin’s rose and menthol scent. Vergil has not known something so innately comforting in far too long. “Never again,” he promises, breath ghosting across Vergil’s lips like a kiss.

* * *

 

The two of them get some food in their stomachs - just a light meal of tomato soup and some dried jerky for Dante, while Vergil reheats the food Kyrie packed for him now that he actually has the inclination to eat it. When that’s done, Dante gets in the shower to at least rinse off the filth coating him. While he’s indisposed, Vergil takes the time to clean up his brother’s room a little, changing the sheets and disposing of any bottles he finds, including the ones hidden under the bed and in the closet, with no small amount of disdain. After the bitter-smelling liquid has been poured down the sink, the bottles will be worth something, at least. Once that’s done, he returns to the bathroom and finds his brother stepping out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist with another scrubbing over his hair with fervor.

Taking a second to enjoy the view, Vergil directs Dante to sit on the toilet, letting him take care of applying the astringent-smelling shaving cream while he fishes out a razor from the medicine cabinet. His hand finds a well-made straight razor. The wood of it is slightly off-color in places from frequent handling, and when he flips it open the edge is dull from use.

Dante’s appreciation of antiquated objects goes beyond aesthetic, it seems. Vergil finds himself reluctantly charmed.

He allows himself to focus on the edge of the razorblade for the moment, toying with how to proceed. Shaving Dante’s face will be a simple, quick affair. Would it be better to leave the rest to his brother? Or should he finish what he started and completely de-furr one of his brother’s more handsome virtues himself?

A blade pressed close to the thin skin of Dante’s throat. The thought of it is compellingly intimate. Vergil disguises the faintest hitching of his breath as a quiet cough.

“Strop is in the top right drawer,” Dante reveals. He sweeps the horsetail brush across his skin with heavy movements that speak to his lethargy. The white cream goes on thick in some places, yet his brother makes no move to correct it and apply it evenly.

Vergil hones the razor’s edge with quick, efficient motions and sets to work, using a finger under Dante’s chin to direct his head. His brother’s hand aids him by pulling the skin taut to allow the edge a closer shave. He does not need to fear nicking the skin under his ministrations - even under duress, Vergil always has complete control of any blade in his hands.

Once the cheeks, lips and chin are done, he hesitates. Propriety demands that Vergil retreat unless he has been invited, yet every fiber of his being howls with a compulsion to take what should always have been his. He hesitates a moment too long, and then Dante makes the decision for him.

Dante lifts his chin high, exposing his throat in a sign of unvoiced trust. Vergil has to take a moment to breathe through the quiet awe and overwhelming adoration that want to choke him for this unasked-for boon. Leave it to his twin to do what was least expected of him, Vergil muses. Even his thoughts are warm and hopelessly fond.

Vergil presses the edge to the underside of Dante’s chin, slow and waiting for a rebuke that doesn’t come. He doesn’t make more than a single stroke when his brother abruptly seems to go limp while still remaining in place. His shoulders drop, hands falling to rest limp and open-palmed in his lap, and his gaze slips downward, away from where he had been tracing the shape of Vergil’s face. The razor freezes before it can start its second stroke.

Submission, some underworld instinct as old as time itself supplies from the back of Vergil’s mind. But is it of the demon or the human variety?

“Dante,” Vergil warns, voice raspy and strained with the effort it takes to hold back the violent urge to seize that almost leaves him dizzy.

“I know,” Dante replies, breathy and wanting for reasons Vergil can’t understand at the moment. “Trish gave me a rundown of a lot of demon etiquette when she found out how “appallingly lacking” my knowledge base was. Helped put a lot of things in perspective, really.”

Of course, she had. Vergil’s not sure if he wants to thank her or stab her. On the one hand, it means that his brother is not ignorant of the full context of his demonic instincts. On the other hand, however, now Vergil will have to be subjected to the fact that Dante knows _exactly_ what he’s doing using a gesture which has no other interpretation. No other meaning.

You don’t willingly give your neck without care. Not when the person you give it to quite literally holds your life and death the palm of their hands.

“If you know, then are you saying that you want to belong to me?”

Vergil means it as a partial jest, a question and a playful dig at his independent and rebellious twin. Dante, who is the hurricane and the inferno incarnate, who yields to no earthly or supernatural power but his own. But then he catches the fine shiver that shimmers across Dante’s skin, raising gooseflesh, the brief closing of his eyes only to reveal dilated pupils, the tilting of his head to further expose his throat. They all tell him otherwise. The scent of blood blooms as the edge of the razor kisses too closely. It laces beautifully with faint odor of lust that begins to taint the air.

Dante swallows lightly. Vergil’s eyes follow the bob of his adam’s apple, fascinated. He pulls himself away from that temptation, only to meet his twin’s waiting, challenging gaze. “What would you do if I said yes?” 

His teeth itch in his gums, and Vergil is wracked by a need to sink his fangs into the flesh of Dante’s throat and _devour_ him. Repeatedly. Relentlessly.

Dante would let him. Vergil can see it in his eyes. Saliva gathers in his mouth, and every fiber of his being _purrs_.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he promises, and breathes in slowly.

His brother narrows his eyes, pale blue irises little more than thin ring around his pupil. The skin of his cheeks flush a faint pink. “What’s stopping you?”

Vergil taps the flat of the razor against his brother’s cheek gently, leaving a thin line of off-white shaving cream behind. “I'm doing this for you because I want to take care of you. I will not be distracted until my task is done, so you’ll just have to wait for your kiss.” A thought occurs to him, so he adds, “And keep your hands to yourself.”

“Tease,” Dante groans dramatically, but still keeps his hands in his lap, staying pliant in Vergil’s hands when he brings the razor back to his neck.

The first few strokes go by quickly and without incident, but after the 8th stroke, it quickly becomes apparent that Vergil’s attentions are having a significant effect on his brother. It starts small - little gasps of sound from slackened lips, the fluttering of long lashes against pale skin, and the subtle thickening of the spicy, sweetly alluring scent of Dante’s lust. Vergil allows himself to hold him by the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the silver strands at the base of his skull, the skin underneath feverishly hot. His pulse pounds against the pad of his thumb, a drumbeat Vergil swears he can feel in his bones. It takes more effort than Vergil would like to settle his own blood, but whether that is due to his own excitement or because of a sympathetic reaction only possible because of their dual nature, he is unsure.

By the time Vergil is three quarters done, Dante is practically sitting on his hands in an effort to obey Vergil’s request, panting, a few strangled whimpers escaping, and visibly trying not to shake to pieces. At some point, his legs have spread wide open in invitation, erection tenting his towel in a lewd display. A few dots of blood bead his skin where Dante’s shuddering became too much to contain, red as the flush that stains his cheeks.

“Be still,” Vergil tells him, voice gravel-rough and deeper than he’s heard in years. He almost doesn’t recognize it.

“Give me a break, will you,” Dante replies, eyes clenched shut and sounding like he’s just gargled a glass of rocks himself. It’s a little fascinating to note how similar they are in this. “I had no idea that my neck was this fucking sensitive.”

“Don’t you shave weekly?”

“Yeah, _I_ shave myself,” he retorts, opening his eyes to give Vergil an unfocused, half-lidded stare. “Don’t really let anyone else have this.”

Vergil wills the heat that spreads through his veins to cool before it can set him aflame. “ _Be still_ ,” he repeats, cleans the razor, and starts again. It’s only a few more minutes before he’s putting a cold damp towel to the newly smooth skin, cleaning it and soothing any lingering irritation. Most of the skin will have healed by now, but even with some food in his stomach, Dante’s natural regeneration still seems to lag behind its normal capabilities. His task complete, Vergil rewards both Dante and himself by bending down and finally giving into the urge that has plagued him for years.

His lips taste sweet and sharply minty like the mouthwash he uses, Vergil notes, luxuriating in their softness, holding the back of his twin’s head. Dante meets him, straining forward into the contact. His hands cup Vergil’s face with a gentleness that is reverent as it is tender. Thumbs sweep under Vergil’s eyes, tracing the lines of his cheekbones, while fingers play with the loose strands of his hair. Dante likely doesn’t intend the touch to be as sensuous as it feels, yet Vergil finds himself seduced by it anyway.

It’s so easy to become drunk on this simple contact. Vergil goes in for another kiss, this time deeper, and then another, driven by consuming pressure awakened by the sudden hunger that ignites inside him. Dante meets him again and again, mouth yielding to the desire that defines such a large part of their bond. His brother lets out the most lovely noises when Vergil moves his lips and tongue just right, and he chases after them, greedily memorizing every reaction.

Just to see what would happen, Vergil touches his power against his brother’s again, threading it through with the careful precision that he uses to wield the Yamato’s blade. Even not as pliant as before, Dante’s soul continues to welcome his touch. An electric current of red deep and vast as an ocean that caresses Vergil’s own soul in a way that gives him the impression of being secure, cherished and loved without a word spoken or a gesture performed. Faintly dizzy with want, Vergil can’t help but give an involuntary moan; one that is returned in stereo, Dante’s hot breath filling his lungs.

Dante stands up from the toilet, the towel rustling and hitting the ground with a quiet thump that is quickly forgotten in favor of putting his free arm around his brother’s waist. Vergil palms the sculpted ridge of his hipbone and presses his fingers firmly into muscle and bone.

A hiss breaks their kiss both when their hips align and their erections, neglected up until this point, rub against each other with only Vergil’s pants to separate them. The interruption gives them both a chance to catch their breath, and for certain annoyances like fatigue to reassert themselves.

“We shouldn’t,” Dante says, sullen and pouting. “Not right now. We’re tired, it’s late...”

“Not tonight,” Vergil agrees with some reluctance and much discontent.

They look at each other for a brief moment, weary frustration palpable, before it bursts like a bubble and all of a sudden they’re laughing - giggling like children as they hold onto each other.

“Let’s go to bed,” Vergil says into his brother’s cheek as he places a sluggish kiss there, feeling the events of the day at last catching up to him.

Dante hums his agreement, nuzzling into his temple with lazy affection. “My bed. It has pillows.”

“... Did you throw out the guest room’s pillows?”

“No… I, uh… just added them to my collection.”

To Dante’s immediate offense, Vergil snorts.

Crawling into bed should not feel as good as this does, what with its old mattress and rough, threadbare sheets, but after a month of a thin mattress in a loft with no real blankets, all alone and hurting, this borders on divine. His brother pressed up against him, dressed in a pair of ratty sweatpants that look like they emerged from the depths of the Underworld themselves, is a weight he welcomes gladly. In the enclosure of Dante’s nest, Vergil breathes it in, scenting the way his smell blends with his twin’s, and sighs in true contentment that he feels down to the deepest parts of himself.

“If I start having nightmares,” Dante mutters quietly, body made heavy by the lure of actual rest after making due through poisoned comas and lack of appetite, “I’m gonna start getting real twitchy, maybe even loud. Just kick me out or something, alright?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Vergil disagrees quietly, the prospect of going even a moment without this contact unappealing in the extreme. Part of him wants to ask what his brother dreams of that causes him such distress, just to ask it, but he thinks he already knows. Fire. A slice across the palm. The clatter of a gold and ruby amulet on blood-stained tile floors. A dying young man with a grim request. “You always did sleep best when we shared a bed as children. Perhaps that trend will hold true even now?”

“Perhaps,” his brother sighs and lets himself go still.

Vergil counts barely more than a minute and a half before Dante’s breathing deepens with slumber. He listens to the beat of his brother’s heart next to his, counting the beats to a lullaby he’s known since the womb. Without notice, he drifts off into dreams of mint-flavored kisses and hands that hold his, reverent and tender.

_~~Deep within, the fragmented shards of a chain that has held him in place, defined him as much as his human heart and demonic blood, and kept his heart from straying shudder, turn molten hot, and slowly reforge themselves into something that already promises to be stronger than before.~~ _

* * *

 

Wakefulness comes slowly, fighting against the leaden pull of long, restful sleep. With the curtains still in place, it is not light that rouses him, rudely attempted to insert itself into his face. Nor is it a suspicious, out of place noise.

No, what wakes him in the feather-light sensation of lips against his, warm breath ghosting over his face. Vergil grins groggily into the contact.

He tenses in surprise and alarm when fingers, just as adoring and cautiously light, glide against the side of his throat. The contact is claiming for all that it is fleeting, the closest to abrasive as Dante’s touch has ever been since his revival. But it does not command, so Vergil allows himself to relax into it as much as he can. After a moment, faced with no opposition, Dante’s fingers journey up to thread briefly through Vergil’s sleep-mussed hair before settling on his side.

“Good morning,” Dante says, his lips curled into a lazy smile.

“Good morning,” Vergil replies, letting himself return the expression. He wraps his arms around Dante’s waist. “No nightmares, I see.”

“Looks like you were right after all,” his brother admits, a touch wry. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

Vergil chuckles, a small burst of victory coloring his face. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Dante hums a noncommittal sound. His thumb gives small strokes along Vergil’s flank that feel wonderfully intimate even through the thin fabric of his nightshirt. “Want to know something interesting that happened over the last month?”

He makes a sound to indicate that he’s listening.

“I got a letter from Colleen,” his brother says like the name should mean something to him. “Lorenzo’s granddaughter.”

Vergil keeps the muscles of his face carefully relaxed. “Oh?”

“Mhmm,” Dante says. This close, the bags under his eyes are still prominent and dark, but even just one night of actual rest has done much to improve them. “Yeah, turns out the old asshole died just last week. I wouldn’t have cared, but since the guy _was_ technically the last of our direct family from mother’s generation, I figured I’d at least call and check in. What do you know, but he apparently died from using a too-high quality ingredient in an age reversing ritual. The overload of potent magic caused the ritual to go haywire and it killed him almost instantly.”

“What a shame,” Vergil drawls with only partially feigned disinterest. Vicious contentment purrs in his mind, the heady brew that is retribution fulfilled, and it spurs him to roll his brother so that he is overtop of him. Dante lets him, following the unheard cue, and Vergil rewards his compliance with a slow, sensual kiss. “Guess he should have double-checked his sources.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dante says in between indulgent presses. Of course he would have figured it out. He doesn’t sound reproachful so much as resigned. “I got through things back then just fine. It’s not worth starting a one-man war with half of mother’s extended family.”

“You are everything,” he replies with firm finality. There exists untold quantities of meaning hidden behind 3 simple words, yet for Vergil they are as indelible as the color of the sky, the passing of the seasons, and the binding of their souls. Dante means everything to him - for him, there is very little Vergil would not do.


	5. So Water Them, And Watch Them Grow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for being months late, but here we are! Finally done! 10K words of nothing but filth and smut and longing and some laughs and good vibes. It was hell trying to get this out of my brain and now I'm looking at this entire project like a person who's just trying to get over the ex they're so over, but I'm glad its finally over. I sincerely hope you all enjoy!! <3
> 
> Edit: Fixed some spelling, formatting and a continuity error >.> Looks like I should have spent more time editing this than I did...

“I’m telling you, Vergil, I can do this myself. I’m a big boy,” Dante repeats for the third time in 5 minutes. His pants hang onto his hips by only the slightest margin with the drawstring undone. Silver hairs dust the slopes of his chest and the underside of his navel, trailing down into the top of loose black trousers. It would only take a small shimmy to make the obstructing cloth hit the floor.

The anticipation is maddening.

Vergil rolls his eyes, tugging his shirt over his head. Bedhead causes his hair to flop into his eyes, which he brushes out of the way. “Last month’s water bill was sitting in your desk drawer and I haven’t had a shower in over 48 hours. Sharing the shower just makes sense when I don’t know when the water is going to cut out next.”

It’s not a lie; the road from Fortuna’s docks to Devil May Cry is easily 10 hours long - 12 if you’re particularly unlucky with traffic in the city streets and need to take the back roads to go around them - and the last time he had taken a shower was after accompanying Nero on a hunt the day before. Even so, Dante hums and eyes him with a knowing amusement and a wary sort of embarrassment. He holds himself apart from Vergil in a manner that reminds him that his brother has spent the years mostly alone, just as he has. 

After all, a few loyal associations are nice, if incomparable to the one bond you truly desire. The one that has defined you as much as the years you spent absent of it. Both fill the gaps - just some more than others.

That just won’t do, Vergil decides. Not after last night’s progress. He stands by his previous resolution - he’s not going to let Dante slip away from him again.

“Just get in the shower,” he tells him, already shucking his sleep pants off. The air inside the building leaves him with goosebumps, both due to the oncoming winter months and turning the thermostat lower to save on the electricity bill. Vergil has withstood far colder, but it would be lovely to get under the spray of hot water sometime soon all the same. To hurry things along, he pushes lightly at Dante’s back to get him moving.

His touch is met with an instant stiffening of muscles and a flinch of strong, broad shoulders. Vergil freezes, fingertips just barely grazing inferno-hot skin. Dante’s pants take the opportunity to fall to his feet, obeying the pull of gravity, but he ignores the sight for now. Dante rolls his eyes at himself, exasperated and impatient with his own reactions when he shouldn’t be, when he probably _knows_ he shouldn’t be. It’s just like him to be so careless with himself. So much so that Vergil must have been born to care for him when he can’t care for himself.

He gives Vergil a wry smile, like it’s an inconvenience rather than a symptom of an ailment that has only just begun to heal. Like he has another thing to apologize for. Rather than dignifying it with a response, Vergil gives another insistent push towards the tub.

“Alright, alright, I’m going, sheesh,” Dante says, holding his hands up in surrender. He bends to turn the knobs and adjust the temperature, one hand gripping the metal bar supporting the curtain above him. The water springs forth from the showerhead with a muted roar and steam rises from where hot liquid meets cold, off-white porcelain. The muscles of his shoulders and back twist into beautiful knots following his spine, forming a canvas of sculpted flesh that trails all the way down to his firm, pert backside and thick, muscled thighs.

He’s slimmed down a little in the last month, Vergil notes. Possibly due to the extended use of his liquid “diet”. Despite being twins, it’s strange to see them closer in size when Dante’s body has always lent itself closer to brute strength. Vergil has built himself to handle the speed and precision necessary to wield the Yamato fluently.

His twin must feel Vergil’s eyes on him. After adjusting the temperature, Dante stretches his arms high above his head. The lines of his body go briefly taut - a portrait of masculine beauty in a singular moment before time reasserts itself. The smirk he throws over his shoulder is inciting with its calculated suggestion, eloquently smug, and instantly lost when Dante ducks behind the plain banana yellow shower curtain.

Vergil follows close behind, chuckling quietly.

Syrupy warmth pools in his veins at having his other half so close, so willing to accept Vergil’s claim on his body and life. Much he would love to get a head start on fulfilling a few old fantasies of his, however, Vergil really would enjoy being clean when doing so. Instead of grabbing Dante as he craves, pressing him against the cold tile wall and devouring him whole, he reaches for a familiar rose-scented bar of soap and begins work on ridding himself of filth and dirt.

If Dante is disappointed with his course of action, he doesn’t show it. The shower is small, with enough room to comfortably accommodate a single man of their size with his arms spread. The two of them need to fumble around each other as they both seek the warm water flooding out from the shower head. Vergil briefly dips his head under the spray and reaches for one of his brother’s homemade soap bars, handing it to Dante. The rose smell is deeply familiar, and appreciated because of it.

He twitches in surprise when hot, soapy hands slide unbidden against his back. “Let me wash your back,” his brother says, in request in all but tone and with no question mark in sight. Vergil says nothing, just continues lathering the soap into his hair. His lack of rejection is all the assent Dante needs to begin his task.

Soon enough, however, the glide of his cleansing touch turns too reverent to be in service to the original offer - or maybe the offer was made to facilitate his appreciative greed. Dante presses more firmly into the muscles of his shoulders and lower back than he needs to, fingers clenching and holding onto muscles relaxed enough to give to his worship. This close, the rush of steam and pounding water can’t disguise the way Dante sucks in a slow, heady breath - like he’s dizzy just from this less than chaste touch. Dante presses in closer, inhales again, like he’s trying to parse his scent. The fingers twitch and tighten on his flesh.

“This doesn’t feel like washing my back, Dante,” Vergil points out, dipping his head back under the spray to rinse it out.

“Can you blame me?” Dante answers when he returns. There’s a grin audible in his voice, low and sensual and wanting. “It’s been years since I’ve felt this excited for something. Let me have a moment to take the view in, will you?”

“Make yourself useful, then, and wash the rest of me,” Vergil says, choosing not to comment on the mention of years. He remembers Dante keeping avid eyes on him as a young man, hardly able to look away. Just like him, then, as Vergil had loathed to turn from the show his twin has made of life, of himself, revealing his torso for all the world to see. An invitation for any who thought they had what it took to claim even an inch of that pristine flesh for themselves.

He feels Dante slowly get to his knees, and it is only his self control that stops him from turning on the spot to behold what he has spent many long nights imagining. His brother continues his task with foreign obedience. He rolls firmly over Vergil’s backside, pushing his thumbs into the meat of Vergil’s upper thighs and the underside of his ass, down over his calves, around to his shins and knees and the sides of his thighs. Streams of warm water rinse the suds away. Dante’s attentions are as thorough as they are full of decadent avarice, firm enough not to tickle the undersides of his feet, leaving faint red marks that bring heat to the surface.

The touch is worship, plain and simple. Reverent and tender; a seduction that has heat thrumming through his blood. Vergil feels himself pulse and rise to the occasion, half-hard just from this simple service. The heat tests his control of himself, his flesh wanting to break out in shivers, so Vergil distracts himself with washing his face and the rest of his torso.

Of course, that’s the moment he feels teeth gently scrape over the skin of his ass before sinking in. Not breaking the surface, but nearly.

Dante grins with delight up at him when he twists around, surprised by the sudden pain more than anything. “Whoops,” he says, not a hint of regret in sight. “Sorry, brother. Couldn’t help myself.”

“Get up here,” Vergil commands him, hand darting down to grip the back of his neck.

Dante comes swiftly, every aspect of him brimming with eagerness to see the results of his antics. Vergil pulls him into a kiss, one hand on his neck and the other gripping his hair, sweeping his tongue over lips and teeth and tongue. Claiming; stealing his brother’s ability to breathe.

It is interrupted by the hands, their smooth glide renewed by the new soap that coats them, that reach for his length. Calluses caress his foreskin, full-palmed adoration, and rub over the head of him. Vergil pulls back with a gasp and a shudder, allowing Dante to suck in another breath. His brother reaches down to gently roll his balls, fingers threading through the hairs that halo his cock, and Vergil can’t stop the way his hips undulate into the contact.

“Gotta get this part, too,” Dante says, eyes looking low, dark and shining with naked desire. “No reason to leave the pocket rocket dirty.”

“The _what?_ ” Vergil asks, utter confusion cutting through the distraction of delightfully firm hands on his cock.

The toothy, opportunistic display only the blind would call a smile that crosses Dante’s lips is enough to make Vergil regret ever asking.

“Oh, you know,” Dante begins slowly, positively giddy with diabolic intent. Vergil is instantly reminded of the times Dante would drag him into trouble as boys, that same smile on his face.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Vergil hisses the threat, tightening his grip in his twin’s hair and dragging his head back roughly. He leans in to devour Dante’s mouth as he grunts, lest it continue to spout such inane drivel. The contact is swift, fleeting, but it is more than enough to leave two of them panting when they finally separate.

“Clean my cock well, brother,” he says quietly against Dante’s ear, smooth as a blade’s edge. “I’ll be using it on you soon enough.”

The returning whisper Dante gives him is but a breath, focus returned and all the more hungry for it. His grip firms around Vergil. “Yeah?”

Vergil rolls his hips again, this time deliberately. He presses close and makes sure that his brother can feel the steady motion throughout his body. He lets his hands trails over strong shoulders and down panting flanks. “Oh yes,” Vergil replies, watching the way his lips fall open. “Did you know that I desired you, even back then? Did you know that I wanted you, on your knees, on your back, below me and astride me? Over me, even.”

He draws them both under the spray, moisture turning silver hair limp and clinging, washing away any remnants of soap. Dante follows as if under a spell, chasing after Vergil with single-minded purpose. His hair drapes around his face in that loose, enchanting wave it takes to when there is more length to it. It reminds him of their mother’s hair.

When his hands reach the pleasing swell of his brother’s ass, Vergil can’t resist the urge to knead muscle and flesh.Their lips brush; a bare whisper of contact that has Dante leaning in for more, unable to connect when Vergil’s hand returns to his hair. “Ever since we reunited that first time, I’ve dreamed of the taste of your lips. I’ve hungered for the feel of your skin.”

Vergil tilts Dante’s head again and lets his breath coast hot against his throat. The shudder that vibrates through Dante’s frame is exquisite. “I wanted to claim you, on that tower, with your power awakening and calling to mine.”

“Probably a good thing you didn’t,” Dante says. There’s a hitch in his breath that wasn’t there before, and Vergil wants to sink his teeth in to see if he can’t steal Dante’s breath another way. “I was pissed enough back then that I probably would have kicked your ass for trying. You _did_ just shove two different swords through me, remember?”

“As if I could forget.” The muscle under his hands is hard as stone, even relaxed. Vergil presses his fingers in just to feel it give. “Even so, I can’t deny that I don’t mind having stalled my desires. You have changed much since those bygone days.”

Backing Dante out of the spray only takes a hint of motion. His brother follows Vergil’s intent seemingly without thought, able to read his body language even when they don’t have weapons in hand. His back hits the wall, causing him to jolt in shock and arch away from the cold wall, letting go of Vergil’s cock in his shock. Vergil is quick to press in and keep him against it. It’s enough of a distraction that he is able to steal the soap from Dante’s hand and place it somewhere out of mind.

“You’ve grown into yourself, brother mine,” Vergil utters into the miniscule space between them. His soapy hands begin to roam across Dante’s body, just as reverent and affectionate as Dante was to him. He starts with heavy, broad shoulders and works down. “You’re body is stronger than it was; older and more capable. It suits you, all this savage strength and skill, hard muscle and bone.”

Overwhelmed, Dante gives a shaky laugh. “What’s with all the flattery?”

“Maybe I simply want to say it. Maybe I’ve wanted to say this for a long time.”

Vergil’s hands glide lower, cups his hips and traces the gilded v of his pelvis. The hair around his cock and lower stomach is wilder than his, longer and less maintained. Vergil pets it, feeling the course, wiry strands. Dante tilts his hips forward, offering himself so sweetly to Vergil’s touch, only to huff in disappointment when he moves on without so much as a glance.

Vergil kneels to make quick, efficient work of getting the rest of Dante’s body, all the while whispering the secrets he’s always kept to himself. Every little observation made in his quiet longing. He makes sure to run the tips of his fingers along the skin he finds after cleansing it, sensitizing it. Goosebumps break out across Dante’s body, pale hairs standing visibly on end. Breath leaves his lungs in increasingly desperate pants. Red paints his body in an attractive flush that leaves his eyes sultry dark. Dante can’t seem to take his eyes off of where Vergil settles at his feet, and Vergil smirks back, smug. 

Only when he’s ready does Vergil give his brother relief he craves. He takes Dante’s cock in hand, testing the girth of it, wraps his fingers tight and gives it a good stroke. Almost instantly, Dante seems to curl inwards, gasping and shuddering as if he’s surprised by the sensation.

“Vergil-,” he chokes out, only to break off into a short, high-pitched noise of need as Vergil’s hand twists.

“Don’t choke me,” Vergil warns before getting to work.

The taste is bitter and salty, musky and diluted with water, surrounded by that mouthwatering, masculine scent he’s come to associate with his other half, but there’s no soap thanks to Vergil rinsing his hand off. Vergil presses as far forward as he dares. He uses his hands for the rest, playing with the foreskin, tonguing the slit and roving over the prominently throbbing vein. He can admit to not having as much experience in this field as he’d like, but what he does know has him cupping his twins balls and kneading them gently, enjoying the feel of coarse hairs under the pad of his thumb that release a warm, spicy musk. Above him, Dante twitches and moans and cries out like Vergil’s skill is unparalleled. His hips threaten to writhe wildly, only restrained by his willpower, but politely, obediently remain against the wall.

Feeling emboldened, Vergil bobs further down, testing his gag reflex to see if it will hold. In response, Dante’s next inhale is gasping, his entire upper body curling over Vergil’s like he can’t stop himself. Dante’s hands scramble over his shoulders and back, trying to find some kind of hold.

Amusing as it would be to see Dante fall over from just getting blown, Vergil’s not done yet. He braces his twins’ thighs and redoubles his efforts. He is rewarded with stuttering, feverish groans. Fingers find his hair and comb through it, sometimes clenching and pulling. It’s almost like getting a massage, leaving Vergil’s scalp tingling. Dante’s feet shuffle and bump against his knees, pressing as close as they can.

It seems like no time at all before Dante is actively pushing at his shoulders. “Holy shit, Verg-” he groans, distressed. “Stop- stop, stop-”

Vergil pulls off immediately, coughing lightly. “Something wrong?”

“I’m-” Dante gulps down air like he’s drowning. “I’m not gonna last much longer. My power is...”

Deep satisfaction curls inside, igniting the heat that flows through his veins like lava. Vergil grins, and by the way Dante’s eyes widen and the thighs under his hands tighten with tension, it’s not a nice sight. “Oh, is that all?”

“What do you-”

“Give it to me,” Vergil demands with his voice, deep and rumbling with otherworldly power, and his eyes. He senses the way his twin’s aura stirs in accelerated currents, like it’s pressurized, now that his attention is brought to it. Vergil threads his power through Dante’s as tightly as it will let him, a knotted rope restricting as much as a hand to hold steady, and drags it closer to the surface. To him. “It’s _**mine.**_ ”

Vergil takes Dante back into his mouth, demanding his pleasure with each bob of his head and swipe of his tongue. And with a long, drawn out cry, an exaltation and a plea for mercy, Vergil feels the moment his brother’s body gives in.

His cock is in too deep for Vergil to have a proper taste of the seed he can feel splashing the back of his throat, but he’s still able to feel the way it pulses and twitches. He seals his lips tight so as to not spill a drop if he can help it, sucking hard enough to leave Dante whining and pawing at his head. Vergil has to swallow rapidly to keep it all in. Only when he’s determined that he’s gotten every last spurt does he draw back.

He smacks his lips with a self-satisfied grin, feeling Dante’s thighs tremble and shake under his palms. Breath whooshes over his hair and the skin of his upper back as his brother struggles to regain his breath.

“That was quick,” Vergil says, feeling like the cat who finally caught his canary. It’s not hyperbole, either - Dante couldn’t have lasted longer than 5 minutes, but Vergil chalks it up to excitement and a lack of self-control. He braces his brother as he gets to his feet, feeling his knees briefly ache from being on the hard ceramic of the tub.

Dante stares at him in an open-mouthed daze from where he slumps against the wall. Vergil is delighted to notice that he seems speechless. He’s always wondered what it would take to strike Dante silent.

“Y-you…” Dante’s voice _shakes_. Then he rumbles a chest-deep noise and drags him in, kissing him like he needs Vergil’s breath and the taste of his mouth to live. Reaching up, Vergil gently cups the back of his brother’s neck, rubbing into the base of his skull. The muffled whimper and shudder he receives is somehow just as gratifying as the orgasm he just dragged from Dante’s body

“Fuck me,” Dante says when he pulls back. His breathlessness gives away a wealth of unsaid yearning.

“Not here,” Vergil denies instantly even as his skin shivers and his cock _throbs_ painfully. 

“Come on, Verg-”

“When I fuck you, brother,” he cuts in, heavy with dark promise and smooth as the rasp of silk over steel, “I want it to be in a place where I can take my time with you. Where I can take you apart, piece by piece, and mold them to my desire. We’ve both waited for far too long to waste this first opportunity in a _shower_ , wouldn’t you agree?”

Sudden anticipation seems to make Dante hesitant enough to consider the idea. But, like the simple, impatient creature he is, his brother shrugs and brings him in for another kiss. “I don’t really care where it happens. All I know is I need you to fuck me _right now_ before I explode.”

“You just did,” Vergil points out, wry. He briefly ducks them both under the water stream, rinsing the soap off, before pressing Dante back against the wall.

“Want you to feel good, too…” Dante breathes against his lips as if he hadn’t heard, raking fingers through Vergil’s hair. Smoothing it back into his usual style from where the water knocked it down.

As always, his dear brother has a way of derailing even Vergil’s best-laid plans. Perhaps it is weak of him that he cannot suppress the gentle warmth of love renewed that flutters in his gut, even when the reasons for its existence readily spring up to remind him. Perhaps it is weak of him that he doesn’t _want_ to suppress it, for the first time in so long. But, then, perhaps there is nothing weak about this at all.

Perhaps, if he’s to be honest with himself, this is the strongest, most assured, most anchored Vergil has felt in a long, long time.

There is a compromise here, surely? That being said, he _refuses_ to have their first time be in an unwashed shower of all places. That is one thing Vergil will not compromise on. Dante will just have to deal with that.

Acquiescent, his sigh ghosts over the dusting of pale hairs that will become a distinct 5 o’clock shadow in half a day’s time. “Very well, brother...”

Before Dante can say anything, Vergil traps Dante’s wrists in his hands and shoves them over his head against the wall, bodily pressing his back until his spine must be uncomfortably straight. Once that’s done, Vergil slots their hips together and nudges his brother’s legs closed tight with his feet, trapping his very erect and eager cock between them. It nestles under Dante’s balls, rubbing up into them, drawing a hard sound from his lips as he’s stimulated again too soon.

“In return, however,” Vergil says, lips quirking up at the naked surprise on Dante’s face. Being the one to do the unexpected for once is intensely satisfying. “You must indulge me.”

Dante’s head tips to the side and he grins a playful challenge, interested even as his body shudders in overstimulation. “You gonna fuck my thighs, then?”

“Any objections?”

The kiss his twin gives him is eager and brief. “Go ahead. Can’t say I’ve never gotten off to the idea of it before. I wanna see how it matches up.”

“Don’t worry,” Vergil tells him with soft menace, moving his hips back, the drag of his cock against warm, shower-soaked skin and hairs giving him much needed relief and friction. A delightful companion to the full-body twitch Dante makes. “I’ll be gentle.”

Dante laughs and twists his hands just enough to lace their fingers together. Vergil thrusts forward just to hear the sound stutter and break, and does it again because of how good the wet tightness feels.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” He asks against his brother’s ear, quickening his pace slightly, pressing Dante’s hips against the wall when he feels his brother start to move a leg up as if to wrap it around Vergil’s waist. His voice is breathy with pleasure, with exertion and the heat that pounds through his blood as though the core of the planet has taken residence in his veins. “Even though it hurts?”

“Y-yeah,” Dante croaks back, his head tilted back and exposing his throat in an invitation Vergil can’t resist. He runs his tongue over the red-flushed skin, tasting salt and drinking deeply his brother’s scent. Dante whimpers a wounded, high-pitched sound in response, lifting his chin higher to give more access. Between their stomachs, his cock gives a twitch of renewed interest, already struggling to fatten with blood.

Something in Vergil _purrs_ , coiling in the back of his mind in a feline desire to savor prey that has been caught after a long, carefully planned hunt. Content to play with the creature in its grasp until he gets bored and devours it. Vergil is intimately familiar with the parts of himself that belong to the Underworld - the parts of himself that respond to his brother’s submission to the pain and pleasure Vergil extracts from his body with relentless motion, urging him to sheath his sharpened teeth in Dante’s offered flesh. It runs parallel to the newer, tentative parts of himself that recognize the trust he shows; not knowing but hoping Vergil will not use his vulnerability to hurt him in ways that do not excite them both.

It is a heady mix, this blending of infernal instincts and soft emotion, dripping into his core with a kind of syrupy, saccharine tenderness. One Vergil would never have guessed was possible once upon a time, when he was a younger man with fewer regrets and even fewer experiences.

“Tell me, Dante,” Vergil says, untangling their fingers enough to transfer Dante’s wrists to one of his hands. The other, he reaches down to dip between their writhing bodies, palming his brother’s straining cock, curling around the purple-hued crown and squeezing rhythmically. Ocean-deep red and gale-harsh blue slide against one another, still tightly threaded, another sense stimulated, and on a whim Vergil wraps them both in it. The extra sensation is invigorating, electric. They both cry out and buck against one another.

“Verg-” Dante tries to get out, gravel-rough and utterly wrecked.

“What else have you fantasized about?” Vergil cuts in, feeling his body tense, warmth coalescing and coiling tight with every thrust. “What indecent, desperate thoughts have you had that brought you pleasure? What have you imagined that has brought you to your knees and left you _begging_ for your brother’s touch.”

“Fuck,” Dante grits out, eyes clenching shut. His body strains as if he can’t decide if he wants to press into Vergil’s hand or grind down onto the cock that stimulates his balls and perineum or pull away from it all. “There’s too many-”

“Tell me, brother.”

“I - me, sucking you off,” he spits the words as if that’s the only way they’ll come out. In reward, Vergil rubs the pad of his thumb across his slit. “O-or you sucking me. Biting me. Scratching my back, my chest and my thighs. You watching me touch myself or - or me watching you. You letting me fuck you and make you feel good. You pressing me into the bed and using my mouth until I can’t fucking breathe.”

Every word goes straight to his aching cock. He’s not going to last much longer. “What else?”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ…” Somehow, the attractive red flush on Dante’s cheeks deepens. His teeth score his lower lip until Vergil wants to suck on it, his eyes achingly unguarded and pupils blown wide until there’s only a thin ring of pale-blue. “You could probably talk me to an orgasm, you know? Thought about that. And the doppelganger. Hell, pretty sure I’ve thought about you tying me down with the Yamato’s sageo and… and using me until I’m begging you to stop…”

Before he’s consciously aware of it, his teeth have sharpened into fangs. Vergil gives in to the urge to bite down on his brother’s throat. Copper tang and infernal spice floods across his tongue, the singular most delicious flavor he’s ever tasted. Dante shouts, spine arching forward hard, and Vergil is _right there_ -

“Vergil,” his brother says, high and trembling. “I-”

“Dante,” Vergil groans, harsh and raw, and his body throbs as he comes between Dante’s thighs. Hot seed splashes in the space between them, Dante’s body pushing against his, his voice a warbling moan. There is a strange, ephemeral sensation that rings throughout his being like struck crystal, but it’s gone before he can gather the presence of mind to examine it.

Water striking his back, lukewarm and getting colder, helps bring Vergil back to the present. His body winds down, muscles faintly trembling from the unexpected intensity of his orgasm. The pounding of his heart beneath his ribs is prominent, his sudden awareness of it second only to the first moments Vergil recognized himself as being whole and free and alive in the aftermath of Mallet, Mundus’ magic having been scrubbed away by the decimating purification of death.

Dante’s nose and lips whisper against the lines of his face. “Brother…”

Vergil lets out a quiet breath, feeling the restless desire under his skin sharpened by his release rather than be satiated. “Still hungry for more, are you?”

Dante continues nuzzling at his cheek and jaw, mouthing wet, adoring lines with slack lips. His hot breath sweeps across Vergil’s skin, a stark contrast to the cooling water thudding against his back. He lets go of his twin’s wrists and they immediately drape themselves across his shoulders. In return, Vergil’s arms loop around Dante’s waist.

Dante pulls back from his task, mouth opening to speak, but Vergil can’t resist the urge to capture him in another consuming kiss. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it is still enough to leave his brother gasping again.

“I’ve wanted to feel you inside me since I was 18,” Dante confesses, voice somewhere between honest truth and begging need.

The words lodge themselves deep into his skin, turns blood to heavy fire in his veins once again, igniting his need into ravenous fervor. It’s confirmation for something Vergil has sensed, always, in the back of his mind when it came time to clash against his twin. A combination of sensory awareness and the pull of his blood and soul that whispered of his brother’s want. All this time, he had assumed that Dante’s passion was limited to their battles - to the competition that has driven them since the day they were born. Vergil doubts he’s wrong even in light of this new information. But to at last have confirmation of Dante’s desire leaves his heart whispering sweetly, silently, his brotherly affections.

Smugly satisfied, Vergil can’t resist the urge to tease. “Is that why I find myself impaling you so often during our boughts?”

Dante lets out a disgusted noise like the contrary brat he is, eyes rolling and head falling back against the wall, pushing at Vergil’s shoulders. Like he hasn’t made 1000 jokes many times worse than Vergil’s mild wordplay throughout his life. Like he didn’t just call Vergil’s dick a _pocket rocket_ earlier. No, Dante’s never been contrary just to be contrary. “Ugh, you know what? Nevermind. Let go; the water’s getting cold and I need to wash the stupidity of that joke off.”

The rumbling noise that emerges from Vergil’s chest leaves his throat tingling. “Get back here.”

Vergil quickly toes the water off, the shower falling silent, and ducks down just enough to throw his brother’s bulk over his shoulder. It’s only his impeccable muscle control that prevents Dante’s yelp and reflexive jerk from sending both of them crashing against the wall on the slippery shower floor.

He doesn’t bother toweling off, not when it would mean denying their mutual hunger a second longer. Vergil kicks the door open with more strength than he means to, sending it slamming into the wall, and throws his brother across the room.

Dante hits the mattress with a bounce, laughing as his multitude of pillows are sent flying from the impact. He barely has enough time to lift himself up onto his elbows before Vergil descends on him with a devouring kiss, planting himself firmly between Dante’s legs with a hand on the mattress to keep him steady. His other travels, making an amorous, full-palmed journey up Dante’s spine, feeling every dip and bump on the way, until it rests firm around the back of his neck. Their flesh pressed so close together, Vergil can feel the shudder that wracks his brother, feel the goosebumps that break out across his skin. He applies pressure, giving a gentle squeeze to the long column in his palm, and the whimpering groan Dante gives him, body arching into him as if he can’t get enough of Vergil’s touch, is intoxicating.

“On your knees,” Vergil says when he can wrench himself away from the kiss. “Hands on the headboard.”

There’s a bit of a scramble as Dante gets into place. He’s already presenting himself, shoulders back, his shoulder blades outlined by strong muscle, spine flexed and legs spread just so. Preening and flexing as if his body is an art piece that he must arrange perfectly to evoke the emotion he wants from his viewer. Fond amusement bubbles in Vergil’s chest like sparkling cider as he glances over the room, thinking about where his brother might keep his lube.

“Second bedside drawer,” Dante points out helpfully. Vergil runs his hand over his firm ass in thanks. There are three tubes, two of which are half full, along with several rather phallic toys. One of them is strawberry-flavored, which raises his eyebrow. When he hears the bed shift, little brother impatient for attention, Vergil grabs the nearest unflavored one and shuts the drawer.

Vergil palms Dante’s hip as he takes his position behind him, squeezing it briefly before pulling away. He pops open the cap one-handed, dexterous fingers twirling the bottle around to squirt a generous amount on his fingers. Vague, time-worn memories tell him that cold lube is uncomfortable, so Vergil takes a moment to puff a few warm breaths on them before touching them down on the concave dip of his brother’s lower back. The muscles jump, skittish, shivering under his touch as he trails them slow and light over the crest of his hip, dipping into the valley of his separated cheeks and coming to rest on the soft, textured opening of his hole.

Dante is faintly shaking before Vergil even has one finger in. “Okay, so… Now might be a good time to mention I… haven’t done this before.”

“Receiving? I don’t have much experience, myself.” The revelation is a little surprising, given how wanton Dante has been with his desire. But, perhaps it is not. Dante has kept himself apart from all but his closest companions, and the seldom times Vergil decided to allow another into his body taught him just how intimate such an act really is. How exposing. Such is why he prefers not to take that position.

“No, I mean. With any of this. Having a partner.”

“... Excuse me?”

“Before you ask, it wasn’t intentional,” Dante is quick to clarify, avoiding the ways Vergil’s stunned stare pierces into the back of his head. His neck and the back of his ears grow suspiciously red. Close as they are, it’s easy to detect the way his scent and aura tinge with something acrid and bitter. “I wanted you, yeah, but I wasn’t gonna be stupid and delude myself into waiting for you or anything. I mean, yeah, _now_ I know. But, back then? Not a clue. So, I tried to have some fun hook ups, no strings attached. But…” He turns his head to look over his shoulder. The expression he makes speaks to old frustration and inward grievances. “I don’t know - I could never bring myself to do it. We’d have fun talking, we’d get back to their place, make out a little. Then, all of a sudden I’d just... lose interest, and I’d back out like a chump. I can’t tell you how many times I forced myself to keep trying before I finally said fuck it and took up long-term with my hands.”

“And now?” Vergil asks, because it needs to be asked. There’s a heavy, sour feeling in his gut that he can’t stand. It’s foolish to be nervous now, when he’s had continuous proof of Dante’s consent, his reciprocated desire, all morning. But the nerves that now prickle under his skin are not rational things.

Dante pauses in his ill mood, glancing at Vergil with flummoxed curiosity. Whatever he reads makes him soften, and his pursed frown transmutes into a smile that is… startlingly innocent.

“Backing out is the _last_ thing on my mind right now, brother,” Dante tells him. That’s all Vergil needs to hear to command his muscles to relax and return to their task.

“You should have told me before,” Vergil scolds even as he presses an oil-slick finger in. Velvet heat clenches down as Dante hisses out a quiet breath, his legs sliding further open in beautiful invitation. His hips tilt up at an unsustainable angle to give Vergil greater access.

“Yeah, I should have.” His brother gives a short, breathy laugh that gives away his continued overstimulation. “But, in my defense, I kinda forgot.”

Part of Vergil wants to be slow and careful in this. Wants to take his time, unravel his twin with deliberation and care, now that he knows. But Dante is not a delicate, driven-snow flower, and this consummation has been held off for too long. He adds another finger more quickly than he likely should. Dante’s body gives to the intrusion easily, and he is rewarded with a quaking groan. “How exactly does one _forget_ they’re a virgin?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it was my hot-ass brother blowing my mind?” Dante rolls his eyes even as his face twists in pleased agony. “My brother who, through experience, has taught me that it’s never a good idea to sweat the miscellaneous details with him. T-the fact that I never managed to successfully hook up was never what bugged me. It was...” He pauses to let out a string of curses as Vergil’s fingers find the soft, giving bump of his prostate. “It was the fact that I couldn’t make _myself_ do it...”

“Because sex is intimate,” Vergil guesses, curling his fingers to give the sensitive nerves a slow, tickling massage that has Dante jerking under his hands. He watches his brother’s spine bend into a hard arch, his head falling back, his hair long enough to tickle the bottom of his shoulder blades from that angle. It’s very tempting to wrap his fingers with those strands and pull. “More intimate than you ever wanted to be with anyone else.”

“Yeah, probably…” Dante hisses out another unsteady curse. “Listen, man, I can’t think with you tap-dancing on my insides like this, okay? Can we save the interrogation for later?”

“Very well,” Vergil allows, spreading his fingers wide. He puts more of his attention into his preparation, focusing on this as he would on the opening moments before a battle. Urgency sits in the pit of his stomach, driven by every noise he earns with his ministrations, but Vergil is more than capable of staving it off until, finally, he deems his brother ready for him.

“Turn around for me,” he tells Dante. His retreat is met with a pebble-skinned shudder and a conflicted breath.

“Finally, was starting to fall asleep.” His twin fakes an aggrieved sigh, sounding put upon despite already scooting down the bed and flipping onto his back. Not far enough, which just means Vergil has to drag him down further with a quick, forceful tug on his legs, pulling Dante’s ass right up against his thighs. The quick gasp he lets out is raw and hungry, and his eyes darken further as he watches Vergil apply more slick to his erection.

Vergil slots his legs over his shoulders, lifting his brother’s lower body until his cock nestles into the cleft, coarse hairs greeting his sensitive flesh. This position will not be what might be the first position people are introduced to, but Vergil has had a long time to think about how he wanted his first time with Dante to go.

Their natures aren’t very compatible with soft and slow and simple, even as children, the two of them were always seeking the exciting, the unusual; Vergil, with his library of books beyond what other children were reading, and Dante, running faster and playing harder and climbing higher than any of his various playmates. Time may have mellowed them out, but Vergil knows them. Their nature. The demon in them would have only allowed tempering to degrees.

It’s why, even now, Dante lifts his hands over his head, clenching the sheets hard, his chin lifted ever so slightly as subtle, harmless-enough instinct demands. It’s why Vergil leans forward, pressing Dante’s legs back until his diaphragm is compressed and its harder to breathe. It’s why, after receiving a jerking nod, Vergil lines himself up and sinks in without pause. His earlier careful preparation ensures a smooth glide, and Vergil can’t help but groan from deep in his chest

When he finally slides in, it feels like coming home; like the first glimpses of blessed shoreline after years lost at sea. Solid heat envelopes his cock just as the hot spring warmth of Dante's essence shimmer-shivers against his, Dante clenching down on him as his body and soul bloom to welcome Vergil within him. He rides out the bliss, fighting to keep his eyes open so that he can take in the way his brother’s eyes roll back, lids flickering as his mouth falls open on an inhale, his head digging into the pillows and exposing the flushed expanse of his throat. It’s a gorgeous sight - Dante in the visceral embrace of euphoria. Vergil never wants to forget it.

"Feels good," Vergil whispers just because it comes to mind, the barest traces of laughter audible as incredulous joy illuminates his heart like a sunburst. Days ago, he hadn’t thought he would ever get the chance to have this. Yet here he is - here they are. Vergil can’t think of a single time he has ever been happier.

The smile that he receives in return echoes the sentiment back in full. "Yeah," Dante breathes, voice rough, already breathless and fucked out before they've even started in earnest, and just as overwhelmed by how right this feels. "Feels great."

Moving feels even better, the drag of his foreskin and the head of his cock against Dante’s walls an exquisite pleasure that sinks into his bones with molten warmth. Dante lifts his hips as best he can to meet his thrusts, over-eager to feel him once more. It’s enough that Vergil has to lower a hand to his hips to steady him. He wants to savor this pleasure for as long as he can.

“Harder,” Dante tells him after he squirms thoroughly enough to understand that he’s not going to move, tone a demand and a plea. “I can take it!”

“I thought this was your first time,” Vergil says.

The teeth that bare themselves in his direction are dull and blunt, little more than a sign of frustration. “I’ve fucked myself before; I know what I can take.”

“You-”

“It’s called a dildo - if you don’t know what that is, ask me later.” The slick heat around his cock clenches hard, the pressure causing his hips to stutter in their rhythm. Vergil drops a hand to the mattress by Dante’s head to catch himself. This nearly causes him to headbutt his brother’s temple as he raises himself onto his elbows in another attempt to gain the leverage needed to thrust back. “Just, _harder_ , fucking _please!_ ”

“Be careful of what you ask for, brother,” Vergil warns lowly, jaw tightening slightly as he pushes Dante back down. Hearing his twin beg for him, tossing his pride and bravado aside in his desire is an oft-imagined part of his fantasies; he cannot deny that it affects him. Something shivers through him, part-soft, molten human emotion and part-sharp, abyssal demonic hunger. It slinks into his body with dark energy, causing his next thrust to scoot Dante further up the best by an inch even with his hand digging into the bone of his hip.

The shout the leaves his brother’s mouth is strangled and utterly _delighted_. “Like that!”

Vergil keeps up his new pace, hips moving in long, hard strokes that have Dante writhing below him. He does keep accidentally moving his brother further along the bed, however. At one point, Dante thrusts his hands under his mountain of pillows, hitting the headboard with a hard thunk to prevent himself from being pushed through them. He just smiles and laughs, his eyes glinting like sapphires shine on the brightest days.

Vergil can’t help but laugh with him, and wonders if his eyes shine the same way.

The bed creaks as it rocks hard under them, the thud of wood hitting plaster a metronome as Vergil fucks his brother. Ecstasy rolls through him in waves, dark and deep and only driving him further towards the edge. It’s aided by every time Dante deliberately squeezes his internal muscles and bucks back to meet Vergil with his own force. The attempts are clumsy at first, but swiftly grow more accurate and more confident, matching him as Dante always does without trying.

The urge to move hits him unexpectedly, like a flash of insight coming from deep-rooted instinct and muscle memory, like knowing which way to swing the Yamato to achieve his desired results. 

“Come here,” Vergil says, repositioning Dante’s legs to wrap around his waist. He winds his arms around Dante’s torso and lifts him up until they’re both vertical.

The new angle slots them even more firmly together, and Vergil doesn’t imagine it when he feels his cock touch previously unknown depths of his brother’s body. Muscles jolt, twitching and trembling like struck crystal, clenching around his entire body, arms and hands clamping around his shoulders and legs tensing around his waist. Dante gasps right next to his ear, wet and hot and breathy like the air has just been punched out of him. “Holy shit, I’m close,” he says like its an epiphany. Like his climax is a light-footed cat that managed to sneak up on him. “V-Vergil-”

“Yeah,” he replies, because he’s not going to last much longer either. Molten heat pools in his balls, a precursor to the dark abyss they hurtle towards with dizzying speed. Something is going to snap any minute now, and Vergil refuses to be the one to go first.

“I’m going to come inside you,” he tells Dante, readjusting his grip on his thighs so that he can thrust with more leverage. For good measure, he even releases some of his restraint, picking up the pace until Dante is all but keening on every breath. The tension coils higher. “I’m going to write my claim so deep inside you that you’ll never be able to get it out. I’m going to make you _mine_.”

Even with his face buried in the crook of Vergil’s neck, he can still hear the way Dante _whimpers_ with aching desire.

“Fuck yeah!” His brother groans and turns his head to nuzzle his forehead hard against Vergil’s cheek. “Do it, come on!”

“Not yet,” Vergil denies him instantly, cruelly. Dante lets out an agonized, snarling groan, impassioned and enraged by his denial. His body writhes against Vergil’s, bearing down on the cock splitting him open as if to take even more of him in. Vergil releases his grip on one of his thighs to wrap it around his waist in a vice-like embrace, holding him in place. “If you want it so badly, then you must do one more thing for me.”

His twin’s voice vibrates like its on a knife-edge between a sob and a scream. “Vergil, I swear, if this is another goddamn tease-”

In an instant, Vergil lets go of his waist to grab a chunk of his hair, wrenching Dante’s head back so that he can look him in the eye. “You want me to claim you? Then show me your motivation. Come for me.”

Dante stares back, wide-eyed. The slick inferno around him clenches as Dante’s entire body tightens, spasms again, and again. Vergil watches with rapturous avidity as the color flushing Dante’s face and chest deepens, darkens. His teeth catch his lip in that infernal, incendiary way once again, his expression rapidly falling to pieces as he falls head-first over the edge into ecstasy. The deep, jagged sound that escapes him is magnificent in its lustful abandon, warm fluid paints the space between their stomachs, both his body and his soul shudder delightfully against his, and help him but Vergil can’t get over the fact that it all belongs to _him_.

His orgasm hits with all the weight of a charging behemoth, like nothing he’s ever experienced before. He bucks up hard several more times before lodging deep, shooting his seed as far as he can with a growl that can’t decide whether it’s human or not. For the next several seconds Vergil can hear nothing, see nothing, smell, taste, feel, _perceive_ nothing. Like this, entwined and open and unresisting, it’s so easy for what is Vergil to blend and bleed into what is Dante, for the two sundered halves to, for a brief eternity, experience reunion. The encompassing joy and euphoria of being whole, being one, at last. Something that, until it happened, Vergil hadn’t realized he’d spent his whole life chasing. 

Coming back to himself is slow, almost strange. On shaking jelly limbs, Vergil guides them both backwards until he’s sitting on his ass, legs crossed to form a space for his brother to sit. The new position causes him to slip out, something that draws oversensitive hisses from the both of them, but once that settles they’re slumping against one another in a tangle of loosely wrapped limbs and soft breaths across sweaty skin and hearts that beat in synchronicity. He already misses being one.

Vergil lazily sweeps his hands up and down Dante’s back from nape to tailbone, tracing the topography of his lax muscles. He leans his head against his brother’s, temple to temple, cheek to cheek. Callused fingers trace idle paths across Vergil’s shoulders, sometimes trailing through his hair and over his scalp like a massage. His brother’s head turns to press a trail of chaste kisses across his cheek until they reach his lips.

Warm breath washes across his face as Dante breathes a raspy chuckle. “”Show me your motivation?” Really?”

“It sounded hot at the time,” Vergil says with a muted laugh that builds up from his stomach. It actually shakes his whole body. He had forgotten laughter could do that. “Worked on you, didn’t it?”

“Don’t count on it next time,” Dante says, smiling at him with all the lazy affection of a predator who trusts enough to show its belly. He presses another kiss forward, deeper and more sensual. Not quite sexual, their debauched state aside, but with enough inclination that it could be, if pushed.

Vergil pulls back, interest peaked. “You’re _still_ hungry?”

The smile turns toothy. “For you, babe? Always. And now that I’ve finally gotten a taste of you...”

Well, isn’t this an exciting development, Vergil thinks to himself. He has never met anyone who could match his (admittedly outrageous) libido. The few people he’s slept with before usually tapped out before he was even half-way finished, leaving him to either take care of himself or otherwise stew in his frustration. Is it something to do with their inhuman pedigree, perhaps?

“Hey!” Dante tugs lightly at his hair like a churlish thing, lips forming an attractive pout. “No ignoring me when I’m sitting right here in your lap. We gonna go at it some more or not? I’m good if you don’t want to - we’ve got plenty of time, but-”

“Just kiss me if you’re going to demand my attention, child,” Vergil tells him before pulling him into a proper kiss, letting himself fall back and dragging Dante down with him. He still has several rounds in him, and this tasting was just the first of many. He’s imagined this day so many times, and there are still a multitude of things Vergil has always wanted to find out for himself.

* * *

The sound of the door to the upstairs living area slamming open could be heard throughout the entire building.

“Hey, Dante! You still alive in here?”

“Damn it, Lady, I’ve told you to stop barging in without knocking!” Dante immediately shouts back, shooting up from where he’d been laying back to chest against Vergil. The limp cock in his raw, oversensitive hole finally slips out, causing them both to let out noises of discomfort and a small flood of warm fluid to seep out onto the sheet. He doesn’t know how he didn’t hear her come in - must have been too absorbed in the latest afterglow, trying to rediscover the point at which Vergil ends and Dante begins, to notice someone stepping uninvited into his territory. He’ll have to learn to keep an ear out when they have sex from now on.

With how much they’ve gone at it today alone, repeating cycles of pleasure and rest totaling several _hours_ according to his bedroom clock, Dante has no doubt he’ll get in plenty of practice.

Three sets of footprints make their way down the hall towards the bedroom - one a lighter tread than the other two, with a heel; all three of them with a gait similar to a casual prowl. It tells him all he needs to know about their company even if he couldn’t sense the two different demonic auras.

Behind him, Vergil gives a curt noise of discontent. His hand curls around Dante’s hipbone possessively, enticingly, a bid for him to ignore the interlopers and rejoin him for more blissfully intimate cuddling. _Vergil_ , however, has never been pulled out of bed by a single-minded Lady and Trish on a mission. Those two don’t care one lick if someone’s naked and enjoying themselves.

(A bit hypocritical of them, too, since he’s tried to drag them out on jobs while they’re in the middle of something before and gotten shot for his trouble. He keeps telling himself that he needs to start keeping Ebony and Ivory on the bedside table when he’s jerking it, but he never does.

The fingers on his hip tighten, and Dante couldn’t suppress the syrupy warm unfurling in his chest if he wanted to.)

“Sorry, Vergil, the cavalry is a-knocking,” he tells his brother, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, still giddy and reveling in the fact that he’s _allowed_ to do so, before scooting out of bed to make for the door. He doesn’t bother reaching for any of the pairs of pants that litter the floor, or make a detour to open the bedroom window. Dante knows his body is loose, muscles slack and hips swaying to a salacious rhythm in the aftermath of several good fucks, and he definitely reeks of sweat and sex like demons reek of blood and gore. The evidence that paints his thighs, ass, stomach and chest hairs are a dead give away to what he spent the first half of his day doing.

well. If they didn’t want the details, they should have given them time to clean up… Again.

Dante pulls the door open with an enthusiastic motion and leans against the doorframe, completely unself-conscious of his exposed nether bits and debauched state. “Ladies. Nero. Have any of you heard of a little concept called ‘calling ahead’ before? I hear it works wonders for planning get-togethers.”

" _What the fuck, Dante!_ " Nero screeches, turning red as a tomato, covering his nose with his shirt and jerking back like an offended puppy.

The reaction amuses him and helps in appeasing the darker, long-memoried parts of himself that remembers he asked the kid _specifically_ not to talk to Vergil about the phone calls. It'll be a bit before he can bring himself to forgive Nero, but then he also remembers Vergil saying last night that he was defending _Dante_.

Knowing himself, Dante will just mess with him a few times and then call it even. That’s a harmless way to smooth things over, right? Right.

Contrasting everyone’s favorite cloistered church boy, Lady and Trish barely bat an eyelash beyond Trish waving her hand in front of her face. They're already used long-used to his shamelessness. They give him playful, pointed grins. Trish also looks over his shoulder to wave at Vergil, somehow managing to make that docile slow-blink look jeering.

He's pretty sure he doesn't imagine the briefest uptick of whirling blue power on the edge of his senses. Oh boy. That's another thing to keep an eye on...

Dual-colored eyes scan him up and down - probably taking in more than Dante really wants her to, but then, that's the liberty he's given her for decades of putting up with his shit. For being the friend he honestly needed. Lady stands there with her arms crossed over her chest, bags under her eyes, mouth twisted into a shape that says the mere sight of him is exhausting, and the _first_ thing out of her mouth is, “Well, look who finally lost his V card.”

It’s stupid, it’s immature, it’s the undying remnants of a morbid in-joke steeped in layers of interpersonal issues that got old well before they turned 30; and yet Dante can’t stop himself from laughing because yeah, yeah he did. And he couldn’t be happier about the outcome.

“Not like it was going anywhere else,” he tells her, causing Lady to break out one of her small, genuinely happy smiles, and just like that, all is forgiven between them.

“What happened to your neck!? You look like something tried to rip your throat out with its teeth!” Nero points out, genuinely alarmed. Dante reaches up, fingers tracing the edges of an almost completely healed bite mark towards the back of his neck. The tips come back covered in sticky red blood. It probably looks far worse than it is.

He senses more than hears Vergil come up behind him. Almost immediately, Nero starts sputtering again. To his disappointment, his twin has decided to get somewhat decent, putting on a rare pair of Dante’s clean pants. Which, now that he thinks about it, no. He’s not going to complain at all. He’s also thumbing at his mouth, trying to wipe away a suspiciously red stain and only managing to smear it across his lips.

Dante has to restrain the urge to lick it off in spite of present company.

Vergil gives his son an interestingly warm look. “I’m surprised to see you here, Nero. It’s only been a day since we last saw each other.”

“Yeah, well…” The pointed, accusing glare he throws at Lady and Trish is both a surprise and not. Clearly, whatever the two of them did to get Vergil to come back must have involved enough violence to piss him off. Dante knows them well enough to guess that they didn’t take the polite route. “I wanted to make sure that they hadn’t tried to dump you in a ditch somewhere. I couldn’t get here sooner since I had to fly all the way in my devil trigger. My uh… wings aren’t the best for long-distance flying.” Seeing the raised eyebrows turned in his direction, Nero is quick to add, “The van’s low on gas from the last hunt, and Nico hates buying at a lot of stations outside Fortuna - says they get “stupid expensive”.”

Dante disguises a snort as a small cough. That explains the sweat smell and the windblown “I fought a twister and lost” look he’s sporting, if not where he got the new sword. It looks like his old one in shape, and yet it reads clearly as a Devil Arm...

The collector in Dante perks up with interest. He’ll have to grill the kid later.

Trish rolls her eyes back. “Please. Leaving him in a ditch would have defeated the purpose of coming to get him!”

“You _shot_ at him! Into my house!”

“If he couldn’t block a couple dozen bullets, Dante would have turned him into swiss cheese years ago. And we made sure not to aim at anything important! I have supernatural awareness, and Lady’s been in the business as long as you’ve been _alive_ , remember?”

“You’re just lucky-”

In order to stop the ensuing conflict he can see coming from a mile away, Dante tries to insert himself with a quick “Easy there!” He’s cut off, however, when his stomach chooses that moment to remind him that all the actual food he’s had to eat in the last several days is some jerky and tomato soup. The sound is loud enough that you could probably hear it out in the front room. Everyone’s attention turns on him, startled by his body’s rudeness, and what do you know, but Dante feels himself start to blush a little.

Vergil huffs, finding this entirely too funny. “You’re a glutton, little brother.”

“Protein shots don’t count as breakfast, _brother_ ,” Dante shoots back with pointed lightness. “If they did, ass would count as a full meal."

“Spare us the details,” Lady tells him. “Now where’s that champagne bottle?”

“... What champagne bottle?”

That gets him a heated glare, which automatically has his raising his hands in surrender to prevent getting shot at again. The motion pulls at his shoulder muscles, which are still sore from Vergil holding them behind his back last round as he cheerfully pounded Dante’s ass into oblivion. “The bottle I got you for your birthday 6 years ago? You know, the one I was gonna pop open when _you_ finally got popped? Laurent Perrier? _That_ bottle?”

… Wait a second…

Dante glares back, incredulous. “You mean the bottle you told me was a _gag_ gift?”

“I swear, Dante, if you’ve already drank that expensive champagne without me-”

Dante quickly grabs a towel from the floor. “Now, hold on a minute!”

(Long after the two of them have gone bickering down the corridor, Vergil coughs innocuously into his fist. “I wondered why there was an odd champagne bottle in Dante’s closet. Perhaps I should have saved it after all. Ah, well.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a wild ride, and I'd personally like to thank each and every member of the Spardacest server who's supported and cheered me on during the undertaking of this monstrous story. Thank you all very much for reading, and have a good one!
> 
> Onto the next project!!!

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank the people of the Spardacest server on discord for being such amazing, brilliant, terrible enablers. You all know who your are.


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